


Super Slayin' Spidey

by Authoressinhiding



Series: Synchronicity-Verse [3]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV), Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), Supernatural, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Awkward Peter Parker, Civil War Team Iron Man, Companionable Snark, Crack Treated Seriously, F/M, Gen, Post-Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Ten, Post-Supernatural Season Eight, Protective Dean Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-19
Updated: 2019-01-31
Packaged: 2019-07-14 04:35:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 63,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16033088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Authoressinhiding/pseuds/Authoressinhiding
Summary: Peter Parker was just a friendly neighborhood Spiderteen, taking summer school classes and bashing trade paperbacks with his best friend. Two awkward alleyway encounters and one unfortunate falsehood later, he’s been shipped off to Montana to learn about things that go bump in the night from two of the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives. Buffy/SPN/Avengers. Sync-verse.





	1. Welcome to the Jungle

**Author's Note:**

> Author's Note: AiH is back! This story takes place in the 'what-if' Buffy/Supernatural verse featured in the penultimate chapter of my fic Synchronicity and chapter 2 of Ramble On. This will be canon-consistent with all Marvel movies up through Civil War, Doctor Strange, and Spiderman: Homecoming. Some slight changes in the timeline between Civil War and Infinity War may happen, however, such as Dr. Strange and Tony Stark being already acquainted.
> 
> Disclaimer: All recognizable characters and settings belong to Warner Brothers, Eric Kripke, Joss Whedon, and Marvel. Not necessarily in that order.

 

* * *

**June 2, 2017, Missoula, Montana, 7:45 a.m.**

Alarm clocks were one of the world's most obnoxious inventions. Particularly, thought Faith Lehane sourly, after seven straight hours of insomniatic hell interspersed with recurring nightmares about being gut-shot and watching her intestines fall out into her hands. Or at least that was the justification she gave herself for hitting the snooze button three times in a row, and now having only twenty minutes to get ready for work.

The thirty-six-year-old reluctantly sprinted for the bathroom, grabbing her uniform off the cedar chest at the foot of her bed as she went, avoiding a stubbed toe by a mere half-inch. To save time, she skipped the conditioner, brushed her teeth in the shower, and twisted her wet hair into a loose bun that would not have been out of place on a geriatric librarian.

After ducking back into her room only long enough to grab the brown leather messenger bag that contained her wallet, a nasty little switch blade, and two lethally sharp wooden stakes, the woman charged down the staircase of the old two story clapboard house and followed the scent of coffee into the kitchen.

"Morning," said her housemate as he glanced up from the newspaper spread out across the kitchen table. He was wearing a long gray robe over his t-shirt and boxers, a pair of knock-off shearling slippers on his feet. The robe was one of the few things that they had been able to rescue from the Man of Letters bunker after Metatron and his angels smote it with the wrath of Heaven two years back, and it made an appearance nearly every morning that the man did not have to be at work before seven. "I made coffee."

"Thanks," replied Faith, grabbing a yogurt and an apple out of the fridge. She downed the yogurt in four giant spoonfuls and shoved the fruit down into her messenger bag. She could eat it in the car.

Dean smiled knowingly. "You late for the diner again?" He glanced at the digital clock over the stove. "What time's your shift start? Eight?"

"Eight-thirty," the woman corrected him. "But Melissa wanted me to come in fifteen minutes early."

The hunter raised his eyebrows at the mention of Faith's boss. "This about that manager position that's opening up?"

"Maybe." She shrugged nonchalantly. "Either that, or I'm getting fired."

"They aren't going to fire you," he replied, his low voice even and reassuring. "Every time I go in there, all I hear about is how the cook's half in love with you and how no one else is anywhere near as good at dealing with the students when they decide to be assholes at three in the morning."

"That's because I don't deal with teenager sh-t at three in the morning."

"Except for when it's Slaying-related," he pointed out, revisiting what he knew to be a sore spot.

Faith winced. She had hoped he wouldn't bring this up today. She and Dean had been in Montana for eighteen months, ever since they followed Sam and his new wife out to the university when he completed his bachelor's and started working on a PhD in American folklore. It had taken Dean a good ten minutes to stop laughing after he realized his little brother was taking hunter research and hunting work and using it for his doctorate. When he finally wiped the tears from his eyes, he had told Sam very seriously that their dad would have been proud – and then he started chuckling again.

The first six months in Missoula, Dean and Faith had lived out of a rundown motel on the outskirts of town. After a month, they reluctantly agreed that if Montana was going to be their base from now on, there were worse things in the world than getting an actual steady job and digs with fewer fleas. If they were going to try to pass as civilians, they should probably engage in more civilian things - hence her waitressing gig at a twenty-four-hour diner located two blocks from the main university campus and his position as a mechanic at one of the larger garages in town.

A couple of paychecks later, they had purchased this rambling old house in one of Missoula's rougher neighborhoods at the county sheriff's auction. The place had sold cheap because of all the maintenance work required, but neither Faith nor Dean was one to shy away from hard work. When they weren't taking three-day weekends to investigate whatever hunting or Slaying job arose in the surrounding states, they spent their days off repainting the interior and exterior of the house, laying down new flooring on the sweeping front porch, nailing fresh shingles onto the roof, or replacing the seventies goldenrod toilets and showers with fresh white porcelain and fiberglass models from Home Depot.

Not so long ago, Dean had mentioned in passing that if they stuck around here, one of these days he'd like to have his own garage, to be his own boss. Sticking around was still something that Faith struggled to conceptualize. During her two decades as a nomad, the most stability she had had was while living in a California women's prison – and then when she was splitting her time between her apartment in Cleveland and Giles' flat in London. Settling in one permanent location still felt unsettling and uncomfortable, as if she was forever waiting for that moment when she would feel the itch to be gone and run off.

But somehow, Faith doubted that she would run off this time. Dean – well, he needed her. The man was fully capable of surviving on his own, but after that rough patch when Sam had suffered a stroke while attempting to close the gates of Hell and then gone on to recover and marry his physical therapist, Faith and Dean had finally admitted aloud that they preferred one another's company to being alone. And whether you hunted or Slayed, it was generally safer to do so with a partner, which was why when he asked her to move into the bunker in Kansas, she had said yes.

Since then, they had never revisited the discussion, and by some unspoken agreement, when the Bunker had been destroyed and Dean mentioned that he was thinking about heading West to Montana, it was clear that he wanted Faith to come with him.

The only thing that occasionally interrupted their otherwise functional partnership occurred whenever Buffy or Slayer Central threw their weight around and pressured Faith into taking on one of the many newly-called Slayers with issues. As Faith had been the twenty-first century's poster child of 'Slayers with Issues,' Buffy and her advisors thought that she would be an excellent person to mentor the at-risk teenagers.

Generally speaking, it wasn't the teenagers themselves that Dean objected to. The house had three bedrooms, even if one was primarily unfurnished, and between his job at the garage and Faith's gig at the diner, they weren't lacking for groceries. It wasn't even that the teenagers required close supervision or extensive training. He had no compunction about putting them to work on whatever house renovation project was next on the list, and there was something fun about teaching a stuck-up teenage girl that super powers weren't enough to keep arrogance and stupidity from getting you killed.

If pressed, Dean would have claimed that it was the principle of the thing. He didn't like that Faith still caved to Buffy, and how the Slayer headquarters never gave them more than forty-eight hours' notice. And after Buffy's brusque phone call the week before, asking _when_ and not _if_ Faith would be able to take on another freshly called Slayer, he had been passive-aggressively dropping hints about how pissed off the whole situation made him.

The brunette woman rinsed out her yogurt container in the sink and tossed it into the recycling bin in the cabinet below. "We gotta talk about this now?" she wondered.

"Nope." Dean slid off of his bar stool and joined her at the sink. He set his coffee mug down on the stainless steel surface and twisted to face her. "You get any sleep last night?"

"Is that your not-subtle way of trying to tell me that I look like crap?"

He shook his head. "You look fine, Faith. You always look fine. Want me to fix you a coffee to go?"

Never one to turn down coffee, the Slayer nodded. "Sure."

Dean grabbed a travel mug out of one of the cabinets and began pouring the still-steaming beverage into it. "For what it's worth, I heard you moving around about two-thirty."

Faith's irritation cooled. 'I heard you moving around' was Dean-code for his own insomnia and bad dreams. "Rough night all around, then?"

"Yeah." He pressed the mug into her free hand.

"You could have come into mine." When the dreams were bad – _really_ bad – when everyone died, or just the person you loved most was murdered over and over again, when Angelus turned her into a vampire, or Alastair racked him in Hell, they had a tacit understanding about finding each other. It was a little easier to disbelieve your nightmares with familiar, steady breathing lying next to you.

"So could you," replied Dean without judgment. He looked up towards the clock again. "If you don't leave now, you're gonna be late."

"Crap," grumbled Faith, following his glance. Five past eight. She had better hope that she didn't hit any red lights on the way over to the diner. She ran for the door, calling back over her shoulder as she went, "Thanks for the coffee!"

The man hollered after her, "Good luck with Melissa!"

As she reversed out of the uneven gravel driveway, Faith reflected on this little arrangement of theirs. It was the closest to true independence from the Slayers' council that she had come since being called twenty years before, and she couldn't ask for a better hunting partner than the one she had now. She often wondered just how long civilian life would satisfy either of them and which one would crack and run first. But in the meantime, until this blew up in her face as everything always did, Faith would settle for playing house.

* * *

**June 2nd, 2017, Queens, New York, 3:27 p.m.**

"Have you read the new one yet?"

Peter Parker rolled his eyes. Whenever his best friend found his next big interest – be it book or movie or video game – somehow Peter always got dragged into it. "Ned, if they've been all over the internet for the last four years, I don't know how it counts as new."

This did not diminish Ned's exuberance in the slightest. "No, seriously," his voice continued emanating from the Stark Phone, "I just finished Swan Song – and, dude, it almost makes all that Avengers stuff you were telling me about look less like a soap opera."

"It wasn't a soap opera," retorted Peter, and he took another bite of his sandwich. He stared out across the Hudson river and drummed the heels of his Spiderman suit against the brick wall of the apartment complex roof that he was currently perched on.

"Which bit? The Captain America stuff or Sam using the power of love to defeat the Devil and lock him back in his cage?" asked Ned.

"Either," the teenager shrugged, then swallowed. "Both." He wasn't sure which he preferred dwelling on less. Over the last year, he had spent an uncomfortably large amount of time dodging the subject of the U.N. Accords and whether or not the goody two-shoes whose recorded lectures featured during detention was a war criminal, a traitor, or simply misguided. Not that Ned's new favorite books were any cheerier.

"Aha! So you _did_ read Swan Song!" Sometimes Ned had a particularly impressive talent for only hearing the parts of conversations that he wanted to hear. It was something like the converse of Aunt May's superpower: hearing the parts of conversations that Peter wanted her _not_ to hear.

"Sure," Peter admitted. Honestly, it hadn't been half bad. Not good, but not half bad. "Finished it last weekend."

"Aaaand?" queried his best friendly excitedly. "What did you think?"

Shifting on the wall, Peter took another bite of his sandwich. "Can't we talk about this later?" he wondered through a mouthful of steak and peppers. "I need to get moving."

"Judging from the smacking, you've still got half a hoagie left."

"Ned –"

"Am I wrong?" Ned demanded, obstinate.

"No," Peter exhaled. "You're right. What did you want to say about Swan Song?"

"Well, to be honest, I felt like it was a bit of a cop-out. The whole 'love is magic' thing. I mean, isn't that what My Little Pony's all about? Wait – no, that's 'friendship is magic,' isn't it?"

The teenager choked on his hoagie. When he finished coughing and spluttering, he reminded Ned, "You admit to watching My Little Pony at school, and I think even the decathlon team'd have to kick you out."

"I'm just saying, it would have been nice to actually read about an apocalyptic battle. Those books never managed to be as epic as they kept promising."

"Maybe you've been watching too much Michael Bay along with your Ponies," teased Peter.

"That doesn't count as a counter-argument."

"Sure it doesn't." Peter swallowed the last bites of his sandwich. "Look, I've gotta go. Can we finish the Ned Leeds Book Review Club tomorrow?"

"I guess. Hey, you don't think you could conveniently manage to drop some bad guy onto the top of Flash's new car, do you?"

"If I'm in the neighborhood," promised Peter. "See you later, okay?"

"Sure thing, Spiderman."

Peter wadded up the paper trash from his sandwich, tugged the cowl of his suit back over his face, and held the crumpled ball in his left hand. Whenever he got within fifty feet of a trash can, he'd toss it in. No point in littering. Sending a streak of webbing across to the parking garage on the other side of the road, he began slinging his way through the city.

As he left the apartment building behind, Peter allowed his mind to wander a little over the events of the day. He had woken up, gone to Midtown for his half-day of summer calculus and robotics electives, along with make-up American history – no matter what Happy and Aunt May said, he had _not_ forgotten to turn in the final term paper on purpose - and then he finished half of his homework before spending the rest of the afternoon taking care of Spiderman business. Peter had managed to stop three muggings and one falling grand piano, and then it was hoagie time. Luckily, he still had a few more hours of glorious freedom before Aunt May would be expecting him home to finish his homework and eat dinner. He wondered if she would object to him picking up Thai on the way back.

"Sir, police scanners mention a disturbance in progress at AJ's Jewelry," spoke a cool female voice in his ear.

"Thanks, Karen." Peter changed directions mid-swing, instantly forgetting about the pad thai. He had work to do.

* * *

From: The One Who Snores  
Time: 11:45 a.m.  
Message:

youtube / superswingingspidey

. . . .

From: Firecracker Girl  
Time: 12:07 p.m.  
Message:

What?

. . . .

From: The One Who Snores  
Time: 12:08 .m.  
Message:

Watch the link

. . . .

From: Firecracker Girl  
Time: 12:12 p.m.  
Message:

I'm at work

. . . .

From: The One Who Snores  
Time: 12:14 p.m.  
Message:

Watch it on break. You get the manager spot?

. . . .

From: Firecracker Girl  
Time: 12:41 p.m.  
Message:

Yes

. . . .

From: The One Who Snores  
Time: 12:54 p.m.  
Message:

Drinks tonight?

. . . .

From: Firecracker Girl  
Time: 1:17 p.m.  
Message:

Sure.

. . . .

From: Firecracker Girl  
Time: 2:00 p.m.  
Message:

You sent me *another* Spiderman clip?

. . . .

From: The One Who Snores  
Time: 2:29 p.m.  
Message:

…yes

From: Firecracker Girl  
Time: 2:37 p.m.  
Message:

I'm starting to think you're in love with him.

. . . .

From: The One Who Snores  
Time: 2:40 p.m.  
Message:

It's Spiderman, Faith. He's awesome.

. . . .

From: Firecracker Girl  
Time: 2:57 p.m.  
Message:

Thought Captain America was more your type.

. . . .

From: The One Who Snores  
Time: 3:03 p.m.  
Message:

That's Sam's kind of hero. Not mine.

. . . .

From: Firecracker Girl  
Time: 3:15 p.m.  
Message:

Right.

. . . .

From: The One Who Snores  
Time: 3:20 p.m.  
Message:

Silver Dollar or the Rhino?

. . . .

From: Firecracker Girl  
Time: 3:25 p.m.  
Message:

Rhino. I get off at six.

. . . .

From: The One Who Snores  
Time: 3:32 p.m.  
Message:

K. Meet you there.

* * *

**June 2nd, 2017, Queens, New York, 7:25 p.m.**

No sooner had Peter finished handling the jewelry store robbery when the telltale sounds of a carjacking two streets away caught his attention. Once Peter left the carjacker – a skinhead barely two years older than he was – webbed safely to the wall of a parking garage, the teenager finally started to work his way back across the city to the alleyway where his backpack and street clothes were stored. He made it to his things in fifteen minutes, and he even managed to change out of his suit without incident.

But that was where everything went mega weird extremely quickly. Just as he began zipping his bag closed, a couple stumbled into the alley, their arms wrapped around each other as they murmured the sort of romantic nonsense that always made Peter feel horribly uncomfortable. Something was up with the age discrepancy between the two: the man was in his late twenties at least, and the gaudy yellow and green check of his suit screamed nineteen-seventies. The skinny redheaded girl clinging to his arm, on the other hand, couldn't have been too much older than Peter was himself.

The teenager slunk back into the darker shadows in the corner of two brick buildings, preparing the web slingers in his hand for a quick vertical escape up onto the roof. He was almost ready to begin his ascent when the man snarled and gave his companion a great push, shoving her so hard that she flew across the alley to crash into the overflowing dumpster, her head hitting the industrial steel with an uncomfortably loud thud.

Peter jerked forward in an attempt to go to her aid, but the girl had already sprang to her feet. To his horror, she was tossing back her messy red hair and laughing. Something pointy and cylindrical – made of wood, maybe? – was clenched in her hand, and she sprinted at the man, whose face had morphed into a ridged, fanged rictus. The girl moved fast, faster than Peter ever would have expected from someone who had just made the acquaintance of a dumpster like that. She collided with the fanged man and jammed the thing in her hand into the creature's chest, just beside its sternum. Despite his enhanced reflexes, all that Peter could do was stand and watch in horror as the snarling thing exploded into a cloud of dust.

Turning to the girl in shock, he stammered, "What the heck was that?"

"Vampire," she said tersely, shaking her unruly bangs out of her eyes.

He knew that he had super-hearing, but Peter still couldn't quite believe what the girl had just told him. Although he usually evidence of his eyes, he was struggling with how that thing had just gone poof, like an old dandelion after a kid blew on it too hard. "What?" he repeated uncomprehendingly. He was mildly used to Mister Stark's robots and even random bits of alien tech coopted by scavengers, but this had been something else entirely.

"Don't worry about it." The girl shot him a pitying glance. "You're safe now."

Utterly confused, Peter glanced from the pile of ash back and forth to the strange girl. He was still trying to put all of his neurons back in order. "If that was a vampire, what does that make you?" he asked at last, thinking that she must be one of those mutants that Mister Stark had told him about once. " A vampire killer?"

"Actually," the girl smiled at him, grinning with pride and self-satisfaction, "the term's Vampire Slayer."

Before he could ask her another one of the fifteen questions crowding his brain, she dashed out of the alley and vanished.

Peter took the long way home this time, ignoring both the subway and the bus in favor of walking the fifteen blocks between the alley and the apartment he shared with Aunt May. His brain buzzed distractedly with every step. Vampires weren't real. They were fiction, just like in those horror books that Ned had convinced him to read last semester. Not that Peter disagreed with Ned's assessment that the Winchesters and their adventures were badass. They totally were. Sure, they were also occasionally badly written, but for trade paperbacks, they were hard to beat. But vampires, werewolves, all the creatures in those books, they only existed in the stories.

Besides, he considered himself to be a fairly rational person. Peter believed in the laws of nature, he believed in the wonders of science. He believed in alien mind control and autonomous artificial intelligence, and even sometimes in Mister – Doctor, he reminded himself – Doctor Strange's sorcery. But vampires? No way.

Briefly, he wondered if he should mention this to Happy or Mister Stark. No, the teenager decided after a few minutes' mulling the idea over, it was best not to. Neither of them would take him seriously – he couldn't even take _himself_ seriously. This evening had been weird, but he didn't need to tell them. Like as not, there had been something wrong with the mushrooms in his cheesesteak sandwich. In the meantime, he would just keep his eyes open, see if he found anything.

His phone vibrated in his pocket: a text from Aunt May, threatening to eat all of the Moose Tracks ice cream in the freezer if he didn't get his butt home soon. Peter took off for the apartment building at a dead sprint, and all thoughts of the monster in the alley and the girl who had turned it to pixie dust fell out of his mind.

That is to say, they fell out of his mind until two weeks later, when the thing with the werewolf happened.

* * *

**\**


	2. Peter and the Wolf

* * *

Peter could not have said how it had happened. One moment, he was scurrying out of his Spiderman uniform, Karen's cheerful congratulations on finishing before his curfew still lingering in his ears. The next thing he knew, the hairs on the back of his neck were standing on end, and he was being tackled by something heavy, hairy, and halitotic.

Claws raked over his left shoulder, shredding his t-shirt easily. A snout-like mouth with far too many teeth snapped closed mere inches from his face and sent another gust of warm fetid breath directly up his nose.

"Whoa," Peter gagged on the stench. He got one palm placed flat against its chest and shoved, forcing the creature's snarling jaws out of his breathing space. With a little more room between him and the thing, the fifteen-year-old was able to bring his knees up to his chest and then kick the creature in the gut.

It stumbled backwards on two legs, growling. In the faint light from the back door to the Indian restaurant across the alley that Peter had never tried, he could tell that the creature was anthropomorphoid and covered in thick brown hair. Yellow eyes gleaming, it charged at the teenager.

Longingly, Peter thought of his backpack and the Spiderman suit inside. No chance to put it on now. He'd have to take this creature down without it. "You ever hear of Tic Tacs, man?" he grumbled as the thing attempted to tackle him a second time. "Cuz, dang, you could use like a five pack of them."

He had the thing wrestled to the ground and was slamming its head against the pavement in an attempt to knock it unconscious when it suddenly collapsed beneath him, a feathered tranquilizer dart sticking out of its left shoulder. Peter jerked his head to the mouth of the alley, where two men in worn-out jeans, flannel shirts, and thick-soled boots were slowly walking towards him. One was casually lowering the shotgun from his shoulder.

"Not bad, kid," said the man without the shotgun. The balding patch on top of his head shone in the light from the curry place. "There's few who could tangle with a 'wolf – much less hold one down as long as you did."

"You some kind of enhanced?" asked the second man. He was shorter and thinner, with a hatchet nose and suspicious brown eyes.

"N-no," stuttered the teenager, stealing a glance towards his backpack, where a couple inches of red fabric were visible above the half-closed zipper. If they found the suit . . . he couldn't – he wasn't ready for his identity as Peter Parker to be publicly linked with his identity as Spiderman. He needed a little more time in the superhero closet.

The men were watching him in clear disbelief, skepticism written large across their faces.

Struggling to think of a good lie, Peter remembered the fanged monster from two weeks ago and the redhead who had so casually dispatched it. "I'm a vampire slayer," he stammered, then instantly regretted it. He had never been good at fibs under pressure.

A single eyebrow crept up the bald man's forehead. "They choosing boys, now? Thought that was a girls-only gig."

"It's a, uh, new development," lied Peter.

"Where's your watcher?" asked the one with the hatchet nose.

Peter had no idea what a watcher was, but admitting that would ruin his story and would lead to more questions. He carefully edged another step closer to his backpack. If he could just get to one of his web-shooters, he could be out of this situation in fifteen seconds, max. "I don't have one."

"No watcher?" The two men exchanged glances.

"Nope." He was only a foot away from his things now. Peter began to reach down for the strap at the top of the bag when something sharp struck him in his right leg. Horrified, the teenager stared down at the silver tranquilizer dart sticking out of his jeans, a couple inches above his right knee. Whatever was in that dart had to be strong stuff, for almost immediately his ears started ringing and his vision went blurry. Peter swayed on his feet, and then his knees buckled. Crashing down onto the filthy gravel, he landed with his face uncomfortably close to the unconscious monster, the one the men had called a 'wolf'.

"Sorry, kid," said the shorter of the two men. "But we don't deal with rogue slayers."

The hazy form of the wolf in front of him faded to black, but Peter struggled against the impending loss of consciousness for long enough to hear a little more of the men's conversation.

"Geez, Luke. What'd you have to do that for?" It was the bald man speaking.

"Kid says he's a slayer. Doesn't have a watcher. You know what happens when one of that kind tries to freelance," said the other man suggestively.

"Trouble." There came a heavy sigh. "Well, we gotta call somebody – can't just leave him here."

"What about Win – "

"No. He's retired, remember? Out with that brother and that girlfriend of his somewhere out West."

"Now _that_ was a slayer."

"Yeah, yeah. Just call the generalized consulting number. That'll do fine."

"You think they got anybody in these parts?"

"It's New York, Luke. I'd be surprised if they didn't have a whole damn team."

At that point, Peter lost the battle with whatever chemical the tranq dart was spreading through his system, and he fell into oblivion.

* * *

**June 13th, 2017, Missoula, Montana, 2:45 p.m.**

"Dean?"

Leaning up against the rear bumper of his latest project, Dean Winchester smiled at the sound of his little brother's voice. "Hey, Sammy," he drawled as he wiped his oil-stained hands on the rag cut out from a ruined t-shirt that was hanging at his belt. "Sorry I missed you earlier – trying to fix the carburetor on this Camaro. You calling about dinner tonight?"

"Yeah, kind of." Sam sounded oddly tentative. "Uh, here's the thing. I need a favor."

Dean shifted his weight against the fender of the Camaro. If he knew anything about Sam and needing favors, this might turn into a long conversation. "Okay?"

"You know how Olivia's just started walking?"

"Yeah," The mechanic smiled at the mention of his only niece. She was still almost as bald as an egg, with the bare beginnings of a bad mullet growing in on the back of her head, and he couldn't see her without making a crack about it. Sam's wife Caroline had threatened Dean with a slow and painful death if he didn't quit – so, he quit. "You need us to baby-proof the house or something?" He scratched the side of his nose.

"Uh, no, that's not it," said Sam slowly. "She's been getting really active and into things, but that's not the problem. Thing is, she pulled Reggie's tail today, and he snapped at her."

Frowning, Dean struggled to place the name. "Reggie? That the dog you got from the pound a month ago?"

"Yeah."

The man shook his head. Large dogs and toddlers were a recipe for disaster, and he had said as much when his brother had first gotten canine fever. "G-d, Sam. I told you -"

Sam interrupted him, "Come on, Dean. Now isn't the time for 'I told you so's, okay?"

"Okay," said Dean gently. He was beginning to get the feeling that Sam was actually upset about this. "What are you and Caro going to do?"

"I don't know," exhaled his little brother. "We obviously can't keep him."

"Will the shelter take him back?"

"No. And even if they would, I wouldn't send him. Shelters are terrible places for a dog like Reg."

Dean had a sinking feeling he knew where this was heading. "Sam – "

"Caro and I were wondering – could you and Faith take him in?"

"I don't do dogs," Dean cut his brother off. "You know that. They shed, they take dumps in your living room, and that bear of yours would wreck the back seat of the car."

"He's a German Shepherd, Dean. He's not a bear."

"Could've fooled me," muttered Dean.

His brother was not amused. "Look, can we just bring him over tonight?" he said pleadingly. "Let him spend a little more time with you and Faith? Even if you'd just watch him for a couple of days."

"Sam – " the man protested, in an attempt to stave off his brother, who was halfway to the vocal equivalent of puppy dog eyes.

"Please, Dean." Sam had finally reached the ultimate combination of dejection and desperation. "We don't feel good having him around Livvy."

Dean sighed in defeat. He couldn't say no. Not when his little brother sounded so miserable. "Fine. But you owe me some Johnny Walker for this."

"Bottle for you, bottle for Faith?"

The hunter snorted. "I don't know if even black label is gonna cut it when it comes to her."

"Huh." Sam mulled that over for a few seconds. "You may be right. Thank you, Dean. I – we – really appreciate this."

"Yeah, well, we'll see how it goes," said the mechanic dismissively. "I'm not promising this as a long-term thing."

"Still, thanks, Dean. I really mean it."

Uncomfortable with the earnest sincerity in his brother's voice, Dean shrugged. "What's family for?"

* * *

"Hey, uh, Peter? Peter, can you hear me?"

Peter opened his eyes to the concerned face of a man in his early thirties, dressed in the kind of novelty Star Trek t-shirt that declared him to be a very particular kind of nerd.

"How do you know my name?" It maybe wasn't the smartest way to begin a reverse interrogation, but it tumbled out before the teenager was even fully aware of his surroundings.

"Your wallet was in your pocket. I'm Andrew, by the way."

"Oh." Peter relaxed, hoping that this meant that this stranger hadn't been through his backpack. He was strapped securely down to what appeared to be a jump-seat, and the roaring of engines around him and the curving roof overhead indicated that he was in a small plane of some sort. The teenager's heart rate skyrocketed. Stranger abduction had not been part of the plan. He really, _really_ had to get better at fibbing so things like this didn't happen to him.

"I bet you're confused," said Andrew. His eyes were friendly, and he wasn't giving off overly evil vibes, but Peter had learned the hard way that evil people didn't always have the most evil vibes. "From what those hunters said back there, it doesn't sound like they did much by the way of explaining."

Hunters. That rang a bell, but Peter's head was still a little muzzied from the sedative. "Not really," he croaked, in a bid for time.

"You, Peter Parker, are a Vampire Slayer." When Andrew spoke, he enunciated the capitals. "Not the first boy we've ever had, but maybe the third? Definitely the first boy in the United States. I looked you up, and we don't have you on our records, but our quick and easy detector-test demonstrated clear Slayer power levels. Which means you probably don't understand a thing I've just said, do you?"

"Sorry, no," said Peter faintly.

"Vampire Slayers – one person in all the world, call to stand against demons and the forces of darkness. And, of course, vampires. Used to be only one of them - Slayers, I mean, not vampires - but now there's a couple hundred."

" _Them_?"

"I'm not a Slayer, Peter. I'm what we call a Watcher – support staff." The man smiled self-effacingly.

"Oh."

"Thing is, usually we'd try to set you up with a Watcher in your hometown, but there's a bit of a crisis right now, and it's not safe for Slayers to be alone. I was actually en route to an apocalypse – demons trying to end the world in Sumatra, if you'll believe it – and so I'm going to drop you off with some friends of ours on the way. They'll help figure everything out."

"Oh," repeated the teenager. These people were crazy, undoubtedly crazy, but there had been the fanged thing two weeks ago, and the hairy creature tonight. Maybe – maybe they weren't as crazy as he would like for them to be. "Can I . . ." Peter squirmed awkwardly in his seat. "You guys wouldn't happen to have a bathroom on this plane, would you?"

"Couldn't fly without one." The strange man helped him to unbuckle his seatbelt and get to his feet. Peter wobbled slightly as he took first one step and then another past the six other seats on the small plane. He caught sight of his backpack sticking up out of one of the empty seats in the last row and grabbed the strap at the top of it. Glancing back, he saw Andrew disappearing into the cockpit. Peter wobbled his way into the tiny bathroom, sat down on the closed toilet seat, and locked the door.

Finally alone, he unzipped his bag and yanked out his Spiderman suit, separating the cowl from the main bodysuit with clumsy fingers. With one last look at the locked bathroom door, he slid the cowl over his head and whispered, "Karen?"

"Hello, Peter," said Karen cheerfully.

"Can you call Mister Stark for me?"

The speaker inside the suit rang four times, and then the line clicked as someone picked up.

"Mister Stark?" asked Peter breathlessly.

"This is Happy, kid," grunted Tony Stark's bodyguard and driver, with the same degree of slightly disgruntled impatience that he tended to employ whenever Peter called.

"Uh, can I talk to Mister Stark?" the teenager requested quietly. "I think I've been kidnapped."

The call was instantly disconnected, and instead Karen's cool voice spoke over him, "Activating Baby Lindbergh Protocol."

Five seconds and six pounding heartbeats later, Tony Stark himself queried, "Underoos?" To Peter's surprise and great relief, Mister Stark sounded concerned rather than irritated. "What's the emergency?"

"Hi, Mister Stark," Peter said, more than a little embarrassed. "Like I told Happy, I think I've been kidnapped."

"That's what this protocol is for. F.R.I.D.A.Y.'s already got a trace on your location. An Iron Legionnaire is taking off now to follow you – should be at your coordinates in fifteen minutes. All you need to do is tell Karen the magic word, and they'll extract you."

"There's a magic word?" asked Peter, incredulous in spite of himself.

"There's always a magic word," replied Mister Stark, his voice becoming slightly distracted. Peter could vaguely hear the clacking of a keyboard in the background.

"Uh, not to point fingers, Mister Stark, but maybe you could have mentioned that earlier?"

"You might have something there."

"Could you, uh, maybe tell me the magic word?" pressed Peter. He didn't think that he needed to use it – not right this minute, but he wanted to have it, just in case.

"Black Sabbath."

"That's not a word, sir," he felt obligated to point out. "That's a band."

"Accurate, but not really the point right now, Peter," said Mister Stark in that half-distracted voice that meant he was in the middle of working on something complicated. "And it's Tony, kid. What have I told you about calling me sir?"

"Not to do it, sir."

"You – we'll finish this discussion later. Can you tell me more about who's got you?"

"Yeah." The teenager lowered his voice further. "They, uh, they call themselves Vampire Slayers. And, uh, Watchers."

"Vampire Slayers?" Some of the concern faded from Tony's voice, to be replaced by sheer curiosity. "Vampire Slayers really _exist_?"

Completely nonplussed, Peter wondered, "You've heard about them?"

"Of course I've heard about them," said Mister Stark enthusiastically. "They're like the epitome of a nerd's we- uh, fan dream. Never thought they were real, though. Women like those, well, they usually only exist on the internet and video games. Plus, vampires? Not real."

Memory of the shadowy thing in the alley filled Peter's mind. He swallowed thickly. "I, uh, I may have seen one, Mister Stark."

"Tony, Pete. It's Tony. When were you going to tell me about that?"

"I . . . I forgot." Peter did not confess the truth: that he had been too embarrassed and confused by the weird experience to say anything.

"Huh." He could hear Mister Stark's frown. "Like you forgot to study for your history final?"

"What? How did you . . .? Did you talk to Aunt May?"

"She called _me_ , Spiderling. She called me. I hoped she was going to ask me to dinner, but nope. Just wanted to chew me out over you needing to repeat a class in summer school."

"Mister Stark, I'm really sor – "

"Later, kid. Later. Do you know where they're taking you?"

"No, sir. They said something about training, something about a person who will help me straighten things out."

"I'm giving your twenty-four hours, and then we're pulling you out, okay, Underoos? And I'm calling May as soon as I hang up with you."

Peter squeaked, "You – you can't tell her what's going on!"

Reassuringly, Mister Stark said, "Calm down. Obviously I'm not going to tell her that you've been Spidey-napped by a secret organization of monster killers that may or may not exist. I'm going to tell her you're out on a small field trip for me. Nothing serious, nothing big."

"She'll complain that I'm missing school."

"You _are_ missing school."

"Sir – "

Tony interrupted him. "Look, Parker, like I said, I've got one – no, make that two, now – of the Iron Legion on your tail. Put your suit on; you can put your clothes back over. The second your vitals get even the slightest bit wonky, you've got five seconds to say you're fine before the Legion begin extraction protocol. And if you don't check in with me – not Karen, not Happy, _me_ – every three hours, I'm sending in the Legion, normal vitals be dammed. You got that?"

"Yes, sir."

"Okay. Call me in three hours."

"Thank you, sir."

"Don't thank me, Pete. Just be careful."

"Okay." Careful. Peter could manage careful. He hoped.

* * *

"You _what_?"

Dean winced. He had known that the Slayer was not going to respond very well to him signing them up for a new four-legged roommate. But he hadn't quite expected her to respond quite this poorly. At the mention of the dog, she had paused in slicing onions for dinner and whirled on him. The sharp, polished knife in her hands did not make him feel any better at all about having this discussion.

"He snapped at Liv," the hunter explained, irritated with how weak and tentative his voice sounded.

"So they can't keep him," concluded Faith. "I'm not arguing with that. But _us_? Dean, we don't even have a fence."

"The wood to put one up in the backyard's been sitting in the garage for a month," he pointed out. "Guess now we'll actually get it built."

Faith turned back to her produce. She shaved another three paper-thin slices off of the onion on the cutting board, and then said, "We're not home enough for a dog."

"That's what the fence is for. We could, I dunno, put a dog door between the backyard and the garage," Dean proposed.

"He's a freaking German Shepherd!" snapped the Slayer, her knife slamming down onto the cutting board with each word. "I don't think they make doors that big!"

Unfortunately, Dean had to admit that she might have a point with that one. "Faith – "

She dropped the knife and looked over her shoulder to glare at him. "You should at least have asked me."

"Excuse me?" barked the hunter.

"You should have asked me. Before you told Sam yes."

Dean gritted his teeth. He wasn't too thrilled about playing doggie day care either, but if Faith was going to use this to start a fight, two could play that game. "Oh, like you ask me whenever Buffy tries to use us as a home for runaway teens?" he snarked.

Now it was her turn to grumble his name in frustration. "Dean – "

"No, that's right," he carried on, talking over her, "because you can bend over backwards whenever Buffy asks, but if Sam needs something, getting you to say yes is like trying to get Congress to pass the budget."

Abandoning her cutting board, the woman took one angry step in his direction, crossing her arms over her chest. "Those kids need me," she said sharply. "Buffy needs me. And I'm sorry if that's inconvenient for you, but – "

"Oh, and Sam needing me, Caroline needing me, Livvy needing me, somehow doesn't matter as much?" Dean retorted.

The Slayer frowned, "That's not what I meant."

Dean narrowed his eyes. "Or is it that you just don't want another dog?"

_Another dog_? Faith winced, realizing that he was referring to Buddy, the beagle she had quasi-adopted in New Orleans over a decade ago for a few short days before he became the target of a preteen wannabe pirate vampire. She lied, "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Stop being a martyr, Faith," snapped the hunter. He wasn't sure who he was more pissed at: her for turning the dog thing into a big deal; Sam for foisting the dog on him in the first place; or himself for not being able to say no. "Stop acting like losing something makes you better than the rest of us – better than me. Hell, why'd you get so hung up over a goddamned dog in the first place? I'll never get that."

They glared at each other in silence for a long moment – _too long_ , thought Dean, half-worried that maybe he actually managed to go too far for once. But then Faith shook her head and turned back to her onions.

"This isn't about the dog."

Dean had never known how to quit. "Isn't it?"

"No, it isn't," said the Slayer, her voice sour with defeat. "I just wish you'd talked to me before you told Sam yes."

"Whatever. I'm going out to get the grill started." Dean spun on his heel and stepped down the hallway towards the mud room and the backyard before either one of them could say anything else and ruin the evening any further.

When the landline in the kitchen rang fifteen minutes later, Faith stared sullenly at the caller ID, yanked the phone away from its cradle on the wall, and growled, "What is it, Drew?"

She stood silently for a minute, two minutes, three minutes, and then her face paled as her evening had went from bad to worse. Faith listened to the conversation on the other end of the phone line, her mind racing as she struggled to think of ways that this might be, after all, fixable.

Finally, when the call ended, she returned it back to its cradle and opened the fridge. She grabbed two beer bottles with the outstretched fingers of one hand and the package of pre-formed hamburger patties with the other. Faith balanced the patties against her hip as she navigated her way out through the back door and onto the creaking wooden patio where Dean was scraping the charred bits of their last cookout off the propane grill.

"I'm sorry," she said, setting first the hamburger and then the beer bottles down on the side of the grill. She took a switch blade out of her pocket and flipped it open in order to dismantle the plastic hamburger packaging.

Dean glanced up from his work to the beer bottles, recognizing the peace offering for what it was. "I'm sorry, too. I was a jackass back there."

"Yeah." The Slayer popped the lid of one of the beers and passed it to him. "And I'm sorry for what I'm about to say."

Looking suspiciously from the beer to her face, the man scanned her expression for any clues as to what her announcement might be. "What?" he asked apprehensively.

"Andrew called."

The tentative peace was shattered. "No."

"He needs us to take a Slayer kid in tonight."

"No."

"Apparently a couple of hunters found him in Queens when they were tracking a werewolf and 'accidentally,'" she formed quotation marks in the air with her hands, "shot him full of doggie downers. Drew's using one of the private planes to transport him – he thinks they can be in Missoula in two hours."

"What did you tell him?"

Faith exhaled. "I told him yes."

He scoffed in disbelief. "So you get pissed at me about housing Sam's dog for a couple of days, but you're a-okay with bringing home a kid?"

She glanced down, unable to continue meeting his hard green eyes. "Drew said Buffy wanted me to handle this one specifically – "

Extending his hand, Dean demanded, "Gimme your phone. I'm gonna call her."

"You can't."

"Why not?" he demanded.

The Slayer explained, "Buffy's fighting a demon invasion in Sumatra. She gets pissed when you ring her on the satellite phone."

"Faith." Maybe if he said this slower, it would actually make it into her thick head this time. "Buffy's sent us another freaking kid – with no heads up! Again! Sam and Caro are gonna be here in half an hour, and I'm not letting Caroline or Olivia around one of those half-rabid teenagers."

"Come on – "

"Screw it," said Dean, and he turned off the propane, allowing the lid of the grill to fall down with a loud clang. "No time for burgers, not if Andrew's anywhere near right about his ETA." He stared at the open package of hamburger meat. "Call Sam. Tell him we'll meet him for pizza instead. I'll clean up here."

"Okay," she replied quietly.

"And we're taking _your_ car, by the way. I am not putting either that monster dog or Carrie mark two in my backseat."

"Okay." Faith was relieved he was handling it this well. She picked up the raw burger. "I'll wrap this up, stick it back in the fridge."

"That's fine," said the hunter dismissively. He surveyed the backyard, frowning. As a new thought struck him, the man chuckled.

"What?" asked Faith, glancing back over her shoulder.

"Guess we'll finally get that fence put up tomorrow. Between you, me, and whatever souped-up temper tantrum throwing nightmare Andrew drops off with us."

"Dean, it can't be that bad."

"You remember Veronica?"

Faith winced. Veronica had been the last Slayer that Buffy had asked her to straighten out. The girl had lasted all of a week before she tried setting Faith's car on fire with the Slayer still inside of it. At that point, Dean had reached the very last frayed strand of his patience.

Within five minutes of finding out about the attempted arson-murder combo platter, he had Veronica zip-tied and unconscious in the trunk of the Impala, and he was driving toward Idaho border, his brother riding shotgun while Caroline took an incredibly reluctant Faith to the hospital to get her superficial burns checked out. Dean had met Xander on the outskirts of Boise, where the hunters very gladly handed Veronica over to the man with the eye patch. Then he and Sam had turned around and drove the seven and a half hours back home, passing through the Nez Perce national forest on their way.

"Of course I do."

"And you still wanna play Slayer foster mom?" he asked in disbelief. When the woman did not reply, he shook his head. "Anyway, you should call Sam. I'll head in in a minute."

Accepting defeat, the Slayer turned back towards the house and slowly made her way inside, hoping that he was wrong and that the incoming Slayerette was nowhere near as bad as Veronica. With a sigh, she tugged her phone out of her pocket and dialed a familiar number.

"Hello?"

"Hey, Sam. It's me. There's an issue with dinner – I've had some work stuff come up."

"Something happen at the diner?" Sam wondered, concerned.

"No, my other work."

Confused, he asked, "The boxing gym?"

"No, the other – never mind, Sam." With a sigh, Faith abandoned her attempt at speaking in code. "It's Slayer stuff. Can we do Zimorino's instead?"

Unlike his brother, Sam was instantly understanding. "You got it. Twenty minutes?"

"Yeah." The Slayer stared out the back door at the man standing sullen beside the grill. She could feel a headache coming on. "See you in twenty."


	3. Behind the Mask

**June 13th, 2017, Missoula, Montana, 7:15 p.m**.

Taking a long, deep drink from his soda, Sam used the movement as an excuse to stare at the man and woman sitting across the red linoleum and faux chrome restaurant table. Something was clearly, awkwardly, horribly wrong with the way his brother and the Slayer were interacting with one another, and he was hoping - terrified and hoping - that it wasn't solely due to the matter of the dog.

For starters, they were being stiltedly polite, and Sam had not seen either of them elbow the other even once during their hour in the pizza parlor. That never happened. Faith and Dean weren't the polite kind of people; they were the elbowing kind of people, who typically took every advantage of even the slightest chance at gaining ground in the never-ending prank war between the two of them and Sam. It was bizarre to see them minding their p's and q's. Dinner at Zimorino's without napkins being pelted across the table or straw wrapper torpedoes shot at his nose, or red pepper dumped onto Sam's pizza when he wasn't looking was deeply unsettling.

"Thanks for taking the dog," he said at last, finally breaching the elephant in the vinyl booth.

"Thanks for building our fence," replied Faith sweetly, and she reached across the table for the last slice of sausage pizza.

"That's nice of you, honey," smiled Caroline, patting her husband on the knee. "Did you work on that today?"

"I haven't – " began Sam.

At the same time, Faith cut in on top of him. "Tomorrow, actually. He and Dean are going to spend the day putting the fence in. Can't leave a big dog all cooped up in a little house, now, can we?" Her brown eyes gleamed with malice.

"Oh, is that what I'm doing tomorrow?" grumbled Dean under his breath.

Faith's hand disappeared beneath the table. There was a pause, and then a small grunt of pain from Dean. To Sam's frustration, his wife actually smiled at this.

"Fine," said Dean, wincing, and he grinned the grin of a dead man. "Fencing it is."

Still, despite whatever under-the-table warfare was going on between the two of them, they at least managed to be pleasant until the meal ended and the group stepped outside of the restaurant into the hazy dusk of summer. Sam hesitantly led the other adults over to his car, where the back windows were rolled down a half inch. He unlocked the vehicle and opened the rear driver's side door to let out a heavy shepherd with a fawn-colored coat, heavily blanketed with black along his back, tail, neck, ears, and nose. The dog leapt lightly down onto the gravel of the parking lot.

"Sit," said Sam, and the beast sat obediently at his feet. The hunter glanced from his brother to Faith, who were both staring at the dog with forced neutral expressions. While Sam could read past the mask of indifference to the mild frustration in his brother's eyes, Faith was an enigma. And he sure as hell knew better than to start digging too deep when it came to the Slayer. The tall man bent to clip a lead onto the dog's collar.

"What's his name?" asked Faith as he straightened up.

"Reginald."

"Reginald?" echoed Dean as if he had forgotten. Sam fought the urge to grind his teeth in irritation. His damn brother damn well knew the dog's damn name.

"Shelter named him. Not me. You can call him Reggie."

"A dog named Reggie," muttered the woman. "What'll be next?"

"A Slayer named Buffy?" joked Dean, earning himself a scowl from Faith.

"Honey." That was Caroline, her hand on Sam's shoulder. "We should head home. It's almost Olivia's bedtime."

"Right." Sam turned back to face the others. There was an awkward moment, and then, hand extended, he passed the leash over to his brother, who miraculously made no further quips beyond, "He'd better be potty-trained."

As Dean and the Slayer walked away, he caught one last frustrated grumble from Faith. "We are not calling him Reggie."

"What's up with them?" asked Caro, buckling the eleven-month-old Olivia into her rear-facing car seat. She hadn't wanted to bring the baby in the same car as the shepherd, but in the end Sam had needed to pick her up from work, and there hadn't been another way.

"Huh?" He dodged the question.

"They were weird."

"You always think they're weird."

Caroline smiled but did not disagree. "Even weirder than usual."

"I, uh, I don't think she's too thrilled about the dog."

"You'll find out tomorrow." It was an order, not a question.

"Huh?"

"Tomorrow. When you and Dean put a fence up for Reginald," said Caroline firmly, in the sure tone of one who has stated many, many times before that acquiring a large dog without sufficient planning beforehand was an irresponsible decision. "You're going to take your brother aside and ask him what's wrong."

"Caroline."

"That weird dysfunctional thing he has going on with that woman is likely the best thing either he or her is ever going to have. So don't let him screw it up."

Sam did not voice his unspoken thought that if Dean and Faith had made it all the way from California to Ohio to Kansas to Montana without killing each other, one large herding dog was unlikely to send them hurtling over the falls of homicidality now.

* * *

Peter wasn't entirely sure what he had been expecting when the small plane had completed its descent and landed with shuddering finality on the tarmac of some deserted private airfield. He cautiously followed the strange man - Andrew's - lead, unbuckling his seat belt and grabbing his backpack before exiting the narrow stairway just behind the cockpit. Throughout the duration of the six hour flight, he had not once seen whoever was flying the plane. Or _whatever_ was flying the plane, the teenager thought grimly, recalling the weird, chirping sounds that had once sounded over the loudspeaker and the embarrassed look on Andrew's face that had instantly followed.

Near the edge of the concrete runway, an old car was idling. A slender woman stood against the front passenger door, her arms folded across her stomach. In the gloom of the evening, Peter could barely make out her frowning expression. His stomach cringed as he remembered that he only had another hour and a half before his next check-in with Mister Stark.

"Now, I know we haven't covered nearly a third of all there is to cover about the Slayers of the Vampyres," Andrew was saying companionably, beginning to walk towards the black car, a reluctant Peter trailing behind him. "But most of it she can tell you, better than I ever could. After all, few are half as familiar with the history of Slayage as is Faith, the Dark Slayer."

"Been running your mouth again, Drew?" said the woman sardonically as they approached.

To Peter's disbelief and mild horror, Andrew _bowed_. "Milady," he replied with a dramatic flourish. "I bring you the latest trainee, one who could greatly benefit from your years of experience. Peter . . . uh, what's your last name again?" he hissed to Peter in an undertone.

"Parker," replied the boy, too busy looking past Andrew at the woman - Faith? - and the dark interior of the car. He could pick out one - maybe two - additional heads.

"Yes. Peter Parker."

The woman raised her eyebrows. "A _boy_? We're taking boys now?"

"This isn't the first one," answered Andrew, a bit peevish. "You remember three years ago in Great Britain -"

"Yes, all right, I remember." The woman stepped forward, uncrossing her arms. She extended her hand in the teenager's direction. He shook it gingerly. Her grip was firm and cool, but not crushing. A good sign, Peter thought hopefully. As far as the unspoken and rather confusing language of handshakes went.

"Hi, Peter. I'm Faith. Drew's told me a little about you. I guess he didn't return the favor and tell you much about me." Faith scowled at Andrew, but there was a lingering fondness in her eyes.

"Not, uh, not yet," said Peter. Then, remembering his manners, he added, "It's nice to meet you."

The Slayer gave a minute shake of her head. "Huh. We'll see." She reached over to her right and opened the door to the back seat. "Hop in," she commanded flatly. "I need to wrap up a few things with flyboy here."

Following orders, the teenager shrugged his backpack off, switching it around to the front, before he clambered into the rear of the car. It was more awkward than he had anticipated, for as soon as he had managed to close the door behind him, he was instantly rushed by a wet, pointed nose and a pair of heavy paws.

"Reg," barked a gruff voice from the driver's seat, a voice that sounded like its owner gargled with gravel at least twice a day. "Get back."

With a twitch of its black ears in the direction of the voice, the giant dog scooted a few inches backwards across the faded fabric upholstery.

"Good boy," said the owner of the voice, and he leaned around the front bucket seat to give the German Shepherd a rough pat on the shoulder. The man was about the same age as the woman, not so old as Mister Stark, but not too many years younger. He wore a flannel button-down over a dark undershirt. His sandy brown hair was longer on the top than the sides, and his pale green eyes were hard and closed off. "You're the new Slayer."

"Ye-es?" answered Peter hesitantly.

"What's your name?"

"Peter Parker."

"Alliterative."

"Yeah, I guess." Outside the car windows, the Slayer and Andrew were engaged in what looked to be a heated discussion. Faith had left her position against the car and marched forward into Drew's personal space, and if she had been looming over Peter the way that she was looming at Andrew, Peter would have been cowering in a corner.

"I'm Dean." The man followed Peter's gaze to the Slayer and snorted. "Don't worry. She won't hurt him. _Unfortunately_ ," he added to himself in an undertone.

"Are -" the teenager struggled with himself. This grim guy was intimidating - far more so than Andrew, even more intimidating, maybe, than the humorless woman outside. "Are you a Slayer, too?"

Still watching the conversation beyond the car, the man narrowed his eyes. "God, no."

"A, uh," he fought to remember what Andrew had told him. "A Watcher, then?"

"Hell, that's even worse. I'm a hunter, kid. The better, sexier version of Ghostbusters. I just work with a Slayer, that's all. Geez, Drew didn't tell you sh-t, did he?"

Peter protested feebly, "There was a lot of information."

"Uh huh." Dean turned back around in his seat to stare the teenager down. "Guess that makes this easier, then."

"What?"

"I don't know what your story is," said the man flatly. "And to be honest, I don't really care. It's all the same, in the end. They call you to be a Slayer; they drag you out of whatever dreams of a white-fence apple-pie life that you might have had; and they slam you out here to get brought up to speed. Welcome to Slayer Reformatory High," he chuckled without humor. "Now, Faith, she's gonna want to be soft on you. You've got that underfed, big-eyed innocent look that makes her think she needs to save you from yourself. Me? I don't give a sh-t. And I ain't gonna put up with sh-t. You do a single thing to put her or me in danger - don't matter to me if it's intentional or not - and you'll be on a train to Mexico before you can say, 'Oops.' You hear me, kid?"

Peter gulped. "Yes, sir."

The man's frown deepened, as if somehow Peter's response had managed to piss him off even more. "Don't call me sir." He swung around to face the front, his eyes flicking once again to the window where Faith was still arguing with Andrew.

They sat in the car in silence for another long, endless minute, before the front passenger door was jerked open, and the Slayer practically threw herself inside. "I'm gonna kill him," she growled, buckling her seatbelt with jerking, angry movements.

"Don't make promises you ain't gonna keep." Dean spun the key in the ignition, then took off to the left, following the concrete runway towards the tiny air control tower and the road beyond.

Faith waited until they had cleared the airfield, then she said, "Cover your ears, kid."

"What?"

"You heard the lady," snapped Dean. "Cover 'em."

Peter placed his open palms over his ears.

"Harder," ordered the man.

The teenager made a show of pressing his hands closer to his ears, although he knew that it wasn't much use. With his enhanced senses, he could stuff balls of cotton in his ears and still win a global championship in eavesdropping.

Sure enough, the first whispered words out of the Slayer's mouth came to him as clear as a bell.

"This is a sh-tshow, Dean."

"When aren't Slayer operations a sh-t show?" asked the hunter rhetorically.

"Can it, cowboy," Faith shot back _._ "This story doesn't add up. Kid wasn't found the usual way - vampire rumors, prophecies, found by a Watcher. Oh, no. A couple of hunters found him wrestling a werewolf in Queens and decided to tranq _both_ of them. The kid, and the 'wolf. And then they called Andrew. Apparently the kid said he was a Slayer right before they shot him full of daydreams, but according to Drew, he'd got no idea what a Slayer or a Watcher or even a werewolf was, outside of the movies. _And_ I just got a call about suspected vamp activity near the resort in Polson."

"That's over an hour from here on Flathead land. You gonna call the shaman to handle it?"

Faith shook her head. "Shaman's the one who called me. He does more medicine and spirits than fangs - plus, he's seventy-five, Dean. We're not asking a geriatric Flathead elder to take down a nest of vampires."

"You're not planning on taking the kid."

"No. Just my bike. You can watch these two." She jerked her chin towards the backseat.

"I think I'd rather take the vamp," grumbled Dean.

The Slayer chuckled. "Sorry, handsome. I'm the one who got the call." She raised her voice. "Peter! You can take your hands down now."

"Everything okay?" asked Peter, trying to act innocent and confused. The confusion part was easy; it was true.

Dodging the question, the woman inquired, "You got any family, Peter?" Her voice was kinder than it had been when they first met.

"No," lied the teenager with a brief pang of guilt as he thought of Aunt May. He added truthfully, "My parents died a few years ago."

"Sorry to hear that," remarked Faith, and to her credit she did sound truly sorry. "Anybody else you need to call, tell them where you are?"

"I . . . I get a call?"

Dean grunted, "We ain't kidnappers, kid. You got a phone?"

"Yeah," Peter mumbled.

"Then go ahead and call whoever you need to," said the Slayer easily. "Just do us a favor and don't make it law enforcement. I got a couple of warrants out a few states over for grave disturbances. Uncle Sam hasn't quite come 'round to the whole girl-against-the-undead thing yet."

"Okay." Hardly daring this to be true - he still had an entire hour until he needed to talk to Mister Stark - Peter fished his Stark phone out of his jeans pocket and dialed the familiar number.

"You're early, spiderboy," was Tony's quick, cheerful response, although Peter thought he could still distinguish a hint of anxiety. "Everything copacetic?"

"Hi, Ned."

"I'm not - " For a genius, sometimes Mister Stark could be a little slow on the uptake. "Oh. Listening ears?"

"Just wanted to let you know that I won't be able to come over to play Halo tomorrow," said Peter, aware that both the man and the woman were paying intense attention to every word that came out of his mouth.

"You okay, Pete?"

"Yeah, Ned, everything's fine - I think I just got food poisoning from dinner."

"You need the Iron Legion?"

"No, I can't keep anything down. Not even ginger ale. But I don't think I'm iron deficient, and I don't need chicken soup."

"All right, kid. If you're sure."

"Thanks for offering, Ned. Uh, text you tomorrow?"

"Three hours. I'm starting the clock now. Three hours."

"Friend of mine," said Peter, hanging up the phone, answering the Slayer's unspoken question. "We play video games on Saturdays."

"No video games at our place. But you can help Dean build a fence tomorrow."

Dean growled so low and loud that the German Shepherd lifted its head from its paws and whined.

"See?" said Dean. "Reg here doesn't want me to build the fence."

"Winchester," Faith snapped, and the curt word sent a sharp strike of lightening through Peter's brain. "Shut up."

Wisely, he did.

Throughout the rest of the twenty minute drive through Missoula's main streets and neighborhoods, Peter kept asking himself if he had misheard. A hunter with the first name of Dean and the last name of Winchester? Wasn't - wasn't that the name of the main character in Ned's new favorite books? No, that couldn't be real. Must be a crazy coincidence. Or, more likely, Peter thought, Dean Winchester wasn't this guy's real name. It was probably an alias. Maybe he had read the books like Ned had and decided to borrow the character's identity. After all, he had to admit, the Dean Winchester of the _Supernatural_ books was one badass dude.

When they pulled up in front of the shabby two-story building, the first thing that Peter noted was the peeling paint on the wooden planking that made up most of the house. Faith disappeared like lightning, flying out of the car and into the garage. She came back out barely a minute later, straddling a hefty black motorcycle that was twice as loud as the sedan they had just driven. Her helmet blocked any view of her features, but she gave Dean a terse nod before roaring off down the road.

"Out."

Peter looked away from the blinking red taillight, growing ever dimmer, to see Dean urging the German Shepherd out of the car and onto the pavement. The man had a thick nylon leash wrapped around his wrist, and he eyed both the dog and the boy speculatively, as if wondering which of the two would be giving him more trouble.

"Come on, then," said the man sharply. "I'll give you the tour."

The tour itself was brief. The narrow entry hall led into a living room with much-used furniture, a large television screen, and an empty white fireplace. Opening off of the living room was the kitchen. Another hall jutting off from the living room led the way to a bathroom, laundry room, and a room with a locked steel-reinforced door that Dean referred to as the library and did not open. Back in the entry hall, man, dog, and boy trooped up the steep staircase to the second floor, where there were three small bedrooms and another bathroom.

Dean pointed him in to the corner bedroom, which contained little more than a twin bed, a desk, and a chair. "That's you, kid."

"Uh, thanks." Peter scurried through the doorway, moving past the man's imposing figure and the dog into the bedroom. He set his backpack onto the edge of the bed. "Is there, uh, is there anything else going on tonight?"

The man's forbidding expression softened slightly. "Here." He thrust the blue nylon leash out towards the teenager. "Do me a favor and take Reggie here on a walk. Don't let him piss on the cars, don' take him into the garage, and try to keep him from taking a dump on the neighbors' lawns. You got that? He's a former military dog, so he should halfway behave."

Peter blanched. He had never had ten pounds of dog on a leash before, much less an eighty pound member of the K-9 unit, and the memory of the horrible breath and teeth of the werewolf was still blazing fresh in his imagination. "Where should I go?"

"Do a square. Three blocks by three blocks. This is Montana, not the City, so you shouldn't be bothered. Something comes after you, run like hell. If you got no choice, try to set the dog on them. Shelter said Reggie did two tours in Iraq - guess we'll see if he remembers any of it."

"Got it," squeaked Peter.

He held on to his nerves and panic until he got outside of the house, off the front porch, and onto the cracked sidewalk that led towards the adjacent house.

"Okay, then," the teenager mumbled out loud to himself. "I'm just taking a former member of the U.S. military out for walkies. No pressure here. Nope. None at all."

Thankfully, the dog did not appear at all nervous. He strolled a few steps in front of Peter, his ears perked forward, pausing every twenty feet or so to sniff a plant, a mailbox, or a street light. To the boy's great relief, Reggie did not attempt to pee on any of the cars they passed, instead preferring to relieve himself near a telephone pole. Neither did he react to other barking dogs behind their own fences. His job was to walk, and he performed his job with remarkable dedication.

While they completed their three-block wide square, Peter took advantage of the solitude to call Mister Stark and update him on the situation. His cowl - and Karen - were safely tucked away in his bag back at the house, so he used his cell phone. Mister Stark agreed that the best thing to do fo now was to watch and wait, to give it a few days of pretending to be a Slayer trainee and gather more information. Peter held back about the weird coincidence with the hunter's name and Ned's book series. It was probably silly, and he had a hunch about where he might find more information anyway.

At the end of the walk, Peter told Reggie to "sit" and "stay" at the edge of the driveway while he eased the garage door up and up and up. The teenager crept into the garage, feeling against the walls in the dark for a light switch. His fingers finally traced across an outlet, and then he scooted his hand up and around until he found the lever. Light filled the garage.

It was nothing as grim as he had been expected. The walls were surrounded with wooden shelving, and a heavy red toolbox sat beside a tall workbench with a single stool. There was a large metal sink near the small side door that led into the house, and an old axe was leaning against the doorframe. A large pile of wooden planks were stacked by the workbench.

In the center of the concrete floor, occupying the majority of the space, was a gleaming black muscle car. There was not a smudge on her windows, not a speck of rust on her undercarriage. Peter wasn't much good at cars, but when he spotted the shining "Chevrolet" written in the grill near the car's left headlight, his stomach clenched. A well-kept old black Chevy car. Was this guy that obsessed with re-living those weird Carver Edlund stories?

Peter tried the shotgun door handle. It was unlocked. He searched the old Chevy as quickly and quietly as he could, hoping to refute his growing suspicions. Instead, the evidence only grew as he moved from the front of the car to the rear. In the front passenger air vents, he found a single red Lego wedged in so firmly that not even his enhanced strength could make it budge. The ash tray on the driver's side held a little olive green plastic solider, that had melted in some long ago heat wave and then solidified around the edge of the ashtray. In the backseat, on the window deck below the windshield, two sets of initials had been carved: _S.W._ and _D.W._

The parallels between this guy's life and Carver Edlund's books didn't stop there. The license plate - Ohio - CNK 80Q3. The secret compartment in the trunk - filled with an uncomfortably large array of things with sharp edges. A beat-up cigar box inside that compartment containing multiple fake badges from several federal and state law enforcement organizations, including the Texas Rangers, most of which had Dean's face spread across them. There were two, faded and tucked into the corner of the box, which showed a man with longer hair and hazel eyes and were stuck together with an old rubber band and a post-it note that read "Sam."

As the last of his disbelief faded away, Peter carefully rushed to put everything back where he found it. Then he killed the lights, lowered the garage door, and stared at Reggie, who was waiting for him still. The teenager picked up the end of the leash once again. "Come on, Reg," he said quietly. "Let's head on in."

Peter wandered from room to room, but the downstairs was deserted. Lost in thought, he trooped slowly up the stairs, the German Shepherd padding at his heels. When he saw the light streaming out from under the doorframe of his assigned bedroom, Peter's heart sank down to his ankles. Gritting his teeth and girding his courage, he took the final two steps across the landing and turned the door handle.

Crouched over his backpack, Peter's red and blue cowl from Mister Stark in his hands, was Dean Winchester - the real, live, resurrected Dean Winchester. As the door opened, he looked up from the cowl to the gangly teenager in the hallway. All the mistrust and dislike had vanished from his green eyes, and his gaze was filled with wonder.

"Holy sh-t," he breathed, rising to his feet. "You're Spiderman."


	4. Dancing on the Ceiling

June 14th, 2017, Missoula, Montana, 1:45 a.m.

Faith left her bike in the garage next to the silent Impala, and let herself into the house through the side door. The light was on in the kitchen, faint lines of yellow streaming onto the living room carpet. She followed the light towards the kitchen and the fridge, sparing a dispassionate glance for the large tawny dog napping on the faded leather couch that Dean had found on Craigslist for cheap a few months ago. The woman slipped her moto jacket off of her shoulders and dropped it onto the back of the equally faded tan la-Z-boy. Faith rolled her neck from side to side until her spine cracked, ligaments snapping over bony vertebrae. She was fairly certain there was dust in her bra. She was equally certain that she didn't care.

After taking out a mini-nest of three vampires and biking back ninety minutes in a rainy drizzle, the Slayer did not have time for small talk. Luckily, the person she was looking for was standing at the sink, washing out the coffee mug he had taken to work that morning. "Hey," he turned when he heard her approach. Huh. It had been nice of him to wait up for her.

She crossed the kitchen floor in five quick steps to grab two handfuls of the front of his plaid shirt. Without any apparent effort, Faith moved the man away from the sink, then spun him around and forced him backwards until his shoulders collided solidly with the fridge.

Dean glanced upwards towards the ceiling and the second floor bedroom above them. "The kid -"

Releasing his shirt, the woman slid a hand up and over his shoulder to the back of his neck, pulling his head down to meet hers. "Won't hear," she hissed, her mouth hovering inches from his. Faith pushed up onto her toes and kissed him.

After a brief moment, Dean pulled away, rocking back onto his heels as far as the fridge would let him. "The dog -"

"I'm still pissed about that," murmured Faith against his lips.

The next time Dean managed to come up for air, his voice was fragmented and breathless. "Vamps?"

"Dusted."

"Good fight?" He struggled to get the words out as the Slayer's focus moved away from his mouth and towards his jawline.

"Not bad."

"Hang on -," gasped Dean as the hand that wasn't digging into his neck suddenly dropped to his belt and started tugging at the leather with purposeful intention.

Continuing to work at the buckle, Faith ignored the yellow light and spoke over him, "and now I need a good f-"

SQUEAK.

The Slayer moved instantly. With one hand, she shoved Dean in the lower gut to keep him out of harm's way, and with the other she whipped a knife out of its sheath on her lower back. Faith jerked her eyes up to the ceiling, where the new Slayer wannabe was clinging with hands and feet in a failed attempt to scrabble towards the doorway into the living room.

Red in the face, Peter could only choke, "Oops."

Shocked, Faith glanced behind her to Dean, who looked sheepish, rather than confused, and not one bit surprised. Speedily recovering her composure, she sheathed the knife and crossed her arms over her chest. "Dean," she narrowed her eyes, once again narrowing her eyes at Peter, "why is there a teenager on the ceiling?"

"Uhhhm," stammered Dean.

The Slayer looked up. "Teenager, why are you on my ceiling?" she asked, her tone light and pleasant.

"Uhhhm," echoed Peter.

"Last time I checked, dangling from ceilings wasn't part of the basic Slayer starter kit," mused Faith conversationally, but her eyes were hard. "Something you boys need to tell me?"

"Not really," Peter mumbled, and his eyes were pleading

"Nothin'," agreed the man standing behind her.

Faith glanced over her shoulder, and her brown gaze locked on his green one. "Dean."

"He's Spiderman," murmured Dean in an undertone.

"Dude!" Peter exclaimed, scuttling across the ceiling closer to the doorframe. "You promised not to tell. You even pinky-swore!"

"Spiderman?" Skeptical, the Slayer pursed her lips and cocked her head to one side, watching Peter's awkward scramble. "Really? Spider-man?"

"Show her, Pete," encouraged Dean.

"But - "

"Catch!" The hunter lifted an apple off of the counter by the fridge and hurled it at Peter's head. Heart racing, Peter fired a length of webbing out of his shooters, catching the apple in midair and pinning it to the cabinet opposite, where it hung, swinging and knocking against the wood.

Faith's eyes following the trajectory of the dangling, spiderweb-wrapped apple for a long, speechless moment before she cleared her throat. "Okay," announced the woman soberly. "That's it. We've got to send him back to the Avengers."

"What?" squeaked Peter.

"WHAT?" Dean demanded at the same time, two octaves deeper and twice as loud.

"Andrew said these training things lasted all summer . . ." continued the teenager in a rush.

The Slayer shook her head. "Sorry, kid, but you aren't staying the summer. Hell, you aren't staying the week. I am not going to get in trouble for kidnapping Tony Stark's pet spider child."

Instantly, Dean countered, "Why not?" while Peter said, "What makes you think I'm Mister Stark's kid?"

The hunter snorted. "You're kidding, right? Everyone's seen those Leipzig clips - and everyone knows that you were on Team Iron Man."

"Mister Stark doesn't like that name," mumbled Peter.

"Of couse not. It's a dumb-ass name."

"Boys!"

They quieted.

"I'm not doing it," Faith repeated herself. "You know why? 'Cause next thing you now, we'll have robots and androids tromping all over the place - and if somebody other than Stark finds out that you're here, there'll be star-spangled super-soldier tight-asses knocking down the fence."

"We don't have a fence," the hunter pointed out.

"We will tomorrow."

Dean exhaled. "I keep hoping you'll forget about that."

"And I'm not going to." Glaring up at Peter, the Slayer asked, "Why would you want to stay here? You're from Queens - this is Montana. Not to play up the stereotypes, but you get more cow-tipping than muggings out here."

"But I - I - I'm kind of curious about how things go out here." Peter lowered his voice and whispered to Dean, "Does she know?"

"I can hear you, kid. Do I know what?" she demanded of Dean.

The hunter smiled. "Yeah, she knows."

"He's Dean Frigging Winchester," said Peter in a rush, the words tripping over each other in his hurry to get them out.

Faith lifted one eyebrow. "And?"

"And he's legendary - I mean, sure Ned's always been a bit more star struck, but I mean - Dean and Sam, saving the world, preventing the Apocalypse, they're heroes! And it's all true."

"He read the books," muttered Dean sheepishly.

"Uh huh. You can't keep him," she warned the hunter, then looked to the ceiling. "And you can't keep him either, spider-teen."

"I'm keeping him."

"Yeah!" echoed Peter. "He's keeping me, and I'm keeping him! Wait . . " he paused, and his face twisted into an uncomfortable expression. "That came out weird, didn't it?"

Under his breath, the hunter coughed, "A little bit, yeah."

"Yeah, yeah, you've got the mutual hero worship all around. I kinda got that part already, what with the whole Spiderman! and Dean Frigging Winchester thing and all." Faith let out an exaggerated sigh. She wasn't that pissed, not really, but if either the kid or the forty-year-old kid realized that, she would have an even harder time getting either of them to behave. And she was still exhausted, covered in dust, and in need of working out her frustration. Frankly, she couldn't be expected to handle this tonight. "Alright, fine," she said on the exhale. "You can stay. For now. How old are you anyway?"

Still dangling from the ceiling, Peter cleared his throat. "Sixteen?" he proffered tentatively.

"You got a license, kid?" asked Dean.

"No?"

"You want one?"

"Yes?"

"Oh, boy," groaned Faith. "Look, Spider - what's your actual name again? Sorry, tonight's been a b-tch."

"Peter."

"Okay, Pete, here's the deal. You can stay, but you need to call your guardian or responsible adult, or whoever and get their permission, okay? Told you earlier that we're not in the habit of kidnapping kids when they've actually got parents or surrogate parents or whatever - that goes double since you aren't actually a Slayer."

"I live with my Aunt May - she thinks I'm spending the weekend working on a projet for Mister Stark - I'm not sure what to tell her, but maybe he'll help me figure it out? How to stress the clean air, good outdoors, all that stuff?"

"Right." The Slayer could feel a headache coming on. She wanted to farm some of the responsible adult schtick out to Dean, but given the way he was looking at Peter like Christmas had come six months early, that would be next to useless. "Well," she went on, "you're also gonna need to call Mr. Stark. 'Cuz like I said, I'm not having freaked out superheroes running through this place and traumatizing the dog, got it?"

"Of course." Peter froze, rotating slowly around on a single string of his synthesized web material, his head dangling mere inches above Dean's and nearly a foot above Faith's. He mumbled, "Uh, Mr. Stark already knows."

"Excuse me?" barked Faith.

"What?" said Dean.

Peter turned an uncomfortable shade of pink. "Yeah," he rubbed the back of his neck with one hand, "actually, once I woke up on the plane, I, uh, snuck in the bathroom and called him. He thinks . . . thinks we could lean a lot from your organization," he recited Mister Stark's words seriously.

Snickering, Dean muttered, "What organization?" and earned himself a boot-heel to the shin for his trouble.

"He, uh, he mentioned having gotten in touch with a, uh, well, Mister Stark called him an acquaintance - a, uh, Mister - I mean Doctor - Strange who told him about meeting a werewolf at a meditation retreat near Tibet."

Dammit, Oz, thought Faith. Aloud, she said, "Well, if your Mister Stark's got questions, he could always just call and ask me to dinner."

Peter glanced awkwardly between the woman and the man to her right, who was wiping the faint traces of cherry-red lipstick off the skin near his ear. "I, uh, uh, I thought you two were . . ."

Faith and Dean looked at one another, shook their heads, and chuckled in unison. The symmetric movements were mildly creepy.

"Us?" The Slayer gestured at the two of them. "G-d, no. We just co-signed the mortgage and pay taxes together 'cuz it's cheaper."

"Okay," said Peter, thinking that if that earlier kiss had been anything to go by, 'de Nile was far more than just a river in Egypt, and the two people in front of him were hippopotami and crocodiles deep, deep in it.

"Besides," interjected Dean with the exact lady-killer smirk that Carver Edlund had described so accurately in the Supernatural books, "Stark's a celebrity. And celebrities get free passes."

"You're just holding out for Jennifer Aniston," Faith teased him with the air of someone revisiting a frequently-held argument.

"Who isn't?" echoed Peter, once again forgetting his filter.

"See?" Dean gave the upside-down teenager a high five. "Spiderman gets it."

"Oh, God," groaned Faith. "I need a drink. A whole summer of this team-up, and I'm going to need lots and lots and lots of drinks. It's two in the morning, Peter. You should be asleep - why are you on my ceiling anyway?"

Peter flushed, and Dean looked down at his boots. "We had a bet," admitted the teenager sheepishly. "If I could spin around upside down seventy times without puking, Dean was going to take Reggie out in the morning. If I lost, I would - and I'd clean the kitchen, obviously. But then we started telling stories . . . " His voice trailed off, and he stared at Dean with the wide-eyed gaze of impressionable youth.

"Bed. Now. Go. We'll sort details in the morning."

Faith ended the conversation by walking into the living room, where she collapsed on the couch with a glass of water, careful not to sit on the sleeping German Shepherd, and listened to the sound of fading footsteps as Peter went upstairs to his bedroom. The leather cushions dipped beside her, and a familiar, warm weight draped itself about her shoulders. She closed her eyes and allowed herself to lean into him.

"House, two cars, dog, kid," mused Dean, his voice vibrating overhead, little more than a murmur. "Once we get that fence put up, it'll be the real American dream." He chuckled, amused by his own wit.

"Stop." The Slayer flicked him on the knee. "That's not even funny."

Dean caught her wrist and wove his fingers through hers. "It is kind of funny," he insisted. Leaning towards her, he dropped a kiss first to her temple and then to the bare skin of her shoulder.

Her eyes snapped open, and now it was Faith's turn to protest, "The kid -"

"Shh." He kissed her shoulder again and then began making his way slowly over her exposed collarbone towards her throat, careful to avoid the faded scars along her neck. Vampire bites, healed or not, tended to be the opposite of erogenous zones for this particular Slayer. "Water's running upstairs."

"Hmm." Relaxing back into the cushions, Faith observed, "You're in a good mood."

The hunter kissed the corner of her mouth. "You brought me Spiderman."

She laughed. "There's something messed up with you, if that's what's turning you on."

"Don't need anything else for that trick . . . Not when I've got you."

"You are one cheesy sonnuvabitch," she accused him, but the post-Slayage horniness was beginning to build up again, and so she kissed him back.

"You love me," smirked Dean, reaching past her to give the German Shepherd a gentle wake-up nudge and a more firm push to get off the couch. "Move it, Fluffy."

Reggie blinked, eyed the two of them, and hopped down, resettling himself on the la-Z-boy. He turned around three times and then laid down, his nose pointed into the deep upholstery at the back of the chair.

"Perfect." The hunter grinned from ear to ear. "Now there's room for practice maneuvers."

Rolling her eyes, Faith scooted farther back along the couch. "I still don't get how you ever got laid in high school," she complained, and she tugged at the neck of Dean's undershirt to pull him closer.

"Let me show you," whispered Dean against her ear. At the moment, they were a mass of tangled limbs, but he wasn't worried. They'd sort it out - hopefully before the kid upstairs finished his shower.

SQUEAK.

All of the blood drained from Dean's face. Straightening up, he peered over the back of the couch. Peter was standing at the foot of the staircase, wearing his school clothes, his wet hair dripping onto the linoleum floor.

"Uh, guys," said Peter tentatively, "Did I forget to mention that I have enhanced hearing?"

Dean glanced down to the couch beneath him, to the scarlet mask of frustration and embarrassment stretching across the Slayer's face. "So, uh," he cleared his throat. "You heard that?"

"Yeah." The teenager looked at the puddle forming at his bare feet. "I, uh, kinda heard all of that. Could you - uh - please not do whatever it is you were about to do?"

"Sure thing, kid," replied Dean in a strangled voice. "You got it."

He remained there, his knees on either side of the Slayer's legs, while Peter nodded stiffly and climbed back up the stairs. Then Dean let out a large breath that he hadn't realized he was holding and collapsed onto the arm at the far end of the couch. Similarly, Faith pulled her knees up to her chest.

For a long moment, they just stared at one another without speaking. Finally, the Slayer swung her legs over the side of the couch and stood. "I'm gonna take a shower," she said brusquely.

His eyes followed her movement. "You want company?"

"Ha. I don't think that'd be a good idea."

"Yeah. You're probably right."

Faith bit her bottom lip and gave Dean a look that he felt could only be properly defined as unfair. "Uh," she said after another moment of silence, "Good night then, I guess." She walked around the opposite side of the couch, headed for the front hallway.

"Good night."

As she reached the staircase, the Slayer called back over her shoulder, "Don't forget - your brother's gonna be over here first thing to start that fence."

"Yep," Dean announced sourly to the living room, empty save for himself and the sleeping German Shepherd. "This is it. This is the American dream."


	5. Meet the Parent

**A/N:** Apologies for the delay! From here on out, I promise weekly updates on Fridays. Cross my heart & everything.

* * *

Dean woke, disappointingly alone, to the angry demands of his alarm clock and the heavy whir of the air conditioner. For a moment, he lay in exhausted confusion beneath the thin comforter, and then the memory of the bizarre events of the night before hit him like an unholy freight train. There was no way . . . Must have been something weird in the pizza, to give him such crazy dreams.

Still, the hunter scrambled out of bed and threw on a t-shirt and the worn jeans that lay abandoned on the carpet. He tiptoed quietly down the hallway - best to let sleeping Slayers lie - and peered through the cracked-open doorway into Faith's room. The woman was passed out diagonally across her mattress, the tawny German Shepherd laying next to her.

Rubbing at the back of his neck, Dean took another few steps toward the third and final bedroom on the second floor. If the dog part of his dreams had been real, did that mean that . . . ?

"Hi!" The bathroom door popped open to reveal a too-pale teenager and a pair of wide brown eyes. "Is there, uh, what should I do for breakfast?" As his stomach growled for emphasis, Peter Parker, alias Spiderman, shuffled from one foot to the next on the bathroom linoleum.

"Holy sh-shoot." It had been real. The dreams had all been real.

Peter yawned. "Are we still working on that fence this morning?"

A little muzzy-headed from sleep deprivation, Dean blinked hazily. "Fence?"

"You know - the fence for Faith? The fence designed specifically for Faith? Faith's fence?"

"The dog's fence?" The hunter rubbed at his neck a second time, remembering the promise that Faith had twisted out of him. The Slayer wanted a fence? Fine - he'd build her the best god-damn fence this side of Texas. Aloud, he said, "Right. I'll call Sam, see when he's heading over."

Peter's eyes bugged wide. "Sam - your brother?"

"Yeah," said Dean, nonplussed.

"The one who fought the Devil?"

"More or less."

"Awesome." He grinned from ear to ear. "That's, that's just awesome."

Dean shook his head and turned towards the staircase. "Okay, Mr. Awesome Man. Let's take this fan party downstairs before we wake Faith."

"Because that would be not-awesome?" guessed Peter.

"Exactly."

* * *

Half an hour later, a little after eight-thirty, Sam pulled up in his two-year-old red Dodge pickup, having stopped at the hardware store on his way over for an additional load of fencing materials, and the brothers set to work. In and of itself, the fence design was fairly simple - a series of upright boards roughly seven feet tall and six inches wide, with a flat plank lying across the top and another plank nailed crosswise roughly four feet from the ground for support.

Before they began, Dean took an old railway nail that he had lying around the garage and a fifteen foot length of chain. He staked these out in the middle of the yard, and when Reggie wandered down to the back door around nine, he attached his collar to the end of the chain, like picketing a horse. The hunter then set out a full water bowl and a cup of the dog food that Sam had brought over. Every couple of hours, when they stepped inside for a cold drink, he refilled the dog's water dish.

Peter was helping, too. Well, that is to say that he tried. After the first hour, in which he managed to whack Dean in the head with a fencing plank and slammed a hammer onto both his own thumb and Sam's in the same stroke, he was demoted to raw materials duty, fetching and carrying wood from the back of Sam's truck, and then, when that ran out, from the giant pile in the garage.

On his second supply run from the pick-up, the sixteen-year-old returned to the far corner of the yard to find the older Winchester brother grinning from ear to ear, wider than the Cheshire Cat.

Sam had a smaller, slightly more civilized version of his brother's grin spread across his own face as he said, "So you're Spiderman?"

Aghast, Peter twisted his head to stare at Dean in horror. "You told him?!"

Unabashed, the hunter shrugged. "It's Sam," he replied, as if that answered everything. Bending down, he lifted another plank and set it into place in the six-inch trench that Sam had dug. When he straightened up, Dean saw that the kid was still looking at him, shocked. "Look, Pete, if you're going to be around this summer, Sam needs to know who you are and that we can trust you."

"You mean you don't trust the Slayers?" queried Peter, reading between the lines. After all the grumbling from last night, he didn't find this too surprising.

The brothers Winchester exchanged a meaningful glance. "No," they said in unison.

"We trust Faith - obviously," explained Sam.

Dean added, "And a couple of the girls she trained."

"Becka have her baby yet?" Sam asked his brother in an undertone.

"Nah. I think that's next month," the older man told him. "Gossip aside, as for the rest of the Slayers, I wouldn't trust them as far as I could throw them. Which would be pretty damn far," he added musingly. "They don't weigh a whole hell of a ton."

"Too much aerobic exercise. Not enough weight-lifting," joked his brother, and both men chuckled.

Reaching for the next board, Dean nodded. "Yep. Okay, enough jabbering. This fence ain't going to build itself."

"I wish it would," groaned Peter.

Dean laughed again. "You and me both, kid."

Shortly after noon, Faith ventured outside the house for the first time. Her black motorcycle roared out of the garage as she left for the earliest of three kickboxing classes that she taught on Saturday afternoons. The Slayer returned around four p.m. to find nearly half of the fence completed and the Winchester boys still working on the fence, their shirts long since abandoned in the hot June sun. Peter was sprawled in the grass beside Reggie, who was chewing on a cone-shaped red rubber toy.

Parking her bike on the concrete driveway next to her sedan, Faith tugged off her helmet. She let out a low whistle of appreciation of the men's hard work as well as the free view, and Sam and Dean waved her off. Laughing, she headed into the house and cranked up the AC. The others were going to need it when they finished.

The first matter of business was to clean up, so Faith showered off the sweat and grime of the kickboxing club, and then threw on a pair of jean cut-offs and a t-shirt. Glancing at her tanned legs in the bathroom mirror, she grinned. It wasn't exactly her intention to taunt anybody by wearing her Daisy Dukes, but if it happened to be an unfortunate side effect, well, Faith supposed she could live with that.

Wet hair confined by an elastic, she tied on an apron and returned to the hamburger patties and onions from last night's abandoned dinner attempt. She could grill burgers as well as any man, but there was no point on firing up the Hastybake until the boys finished up for the day. Faith kept herself busy in the meantime by making a double batch of bagged coleslaw and slicing up the last half of the watermelon. Next, she checked to make sure there was something in the fridge for Peter to drink that was neither beer nor water.

Her work completed, the Slayer flopped onto the couch and closed her eyes for a quick cat nap. She woke to an eyeful of sweaty, shirtless Winchester lifting her ankles off the couch and dropping them onto the floor to make room for himself.

Faith took a long, slow look at Dean's torso and teased. "You trying to torture me?"

"I don't know. Are you?" He gestured to her bare legs.

"Dunno," she countered. The Slayer picked her feet up from off of the carpet and deposited them into his lap, announcing, "You need a shower."

Dean's hand dropped down onto the bony outcropping of her ankle. "Mmm. Peter invited Tony Stark over for dinner."

"WHAT?!" The woman jerked upright into a sitting position, overestimated the width of the couch, and tumbled onto the floor, banging her elbow on the coffee table in the process. "Ouch. Son of a -"

Smirking, the hunter extended a hand and pulled her back up from her fall. "Try not to sh-t a brick, will you?" he said conversationally. "Sam already did that, and I don't think our septic tank can handle two brick-sized dumps in one day."

Faith rolled her eyes and rubbed at her stinging elbow. "Your brother staying for dinner, too?"

"No. Caro called, says she thinks Livvy has an ear infection and she wants him home."

Sam and Caroline's daughter was always coming down with some infection or other, but Faith wisely kept this thought to herself. Frankly, it was never worth it to say anything less than complimentary about Dean's niece. Instead, she wondered, "What time is Stark -"

Not waiting for her to finish the question, he answered, "Hour and a half."

"Yeah, you should definitely shower."

"I will. Gimme a sec to just sit here. Pete's upstairs getting cleaned up, so I gotta wait for him to finish."

The Slayer snickered. "Remember how you didn't want kids?"

Dean glanced at her out of the corner of his eyes. "I never said that."

"You did," she reminded him. "Like five times last week when you got super drunk on tequila."

"Pretty sure my exact words were that I'd missed the chance."

"Ri-ight," sniggered Faith, kicking her feet back up into his lap a second time. More seriously, she went on, "You know we can't keep him, don't you?"

"Can't we?" countered Dean. He began tracing a meaningless pattern on the woman's shin.

She did not bother to push him off. "I think you'll have to fight Tony Stark on that one. Not to mention his aunt."

The hunter shrugged, unbothered. "Who knows? Maybe we can do some kind of joint custody thing. And what about you, Miss Hypocrite?"

"Huh?"

"Whose room did Reggie sleep in last night?"

"That's differ - "

"Hey," he cut her off, "Don't worry - I won't tell Sam. Not until after he finishes the fence and gets each of us a bottle of Johnny Walker."

Relieved, Faith beamed. "Genius."

* * *

Despite the first few minutes of shock and awe when a giant robot suit of crimson and gold landed on their lawn ("Hot Rod Red!" Dean corrected her sharply when she muttered the colors aloud. "Hot Rod Red!") and a dark-haired man with a very recognizable goatee and mustache and black Ray Bans stepped out, dinner proved to be less awkward than Faith had anticipated. Sure, there was the requisite testosterone-fueled handshake competition, and Peter hovered around the grill like a moth, darting between one of his heroes to the next with an anxious expression, concerned that they wouldn't get along, but once they had brought the food inside and settled down at the rickety kitchen table, things settled down.

Although she despised excessive small talk, the Slayer nevertheless waited until everyone had gotten through their first burger and were halfway through their second before clearing her throat and addressing their guest. "Peter said you were on board with all of this," she began. "Why? You've got . . . every resource in the world for superhero training. Why leave him here? Especially after that . . . civil war snafu." This last sentence was garbled by a mouthful of cheeseburger and a plop as ketchup dripped down onto her plate.

"Not big on the small talk, are you?"

Faith swallowed. "Not really, no."

The billionaire shrugged. "I can respect that. That 'civil war snafu,' as you call it, was what got me thinking. We need more players on the team."

Switching all of the power of his intense gaze directly onto her, Tony Stark surveyed the Slayer for a quiet moment before continuing. "See, here's the thing, kids," he said lightly. "The real threat, it's not the government or the, uh, _former_ Avengers. The real problem," he gestured with his sunglasses up to the ceiling and the clear blue Montana sky beyond, "comes from out there. You remember that attempted invasion of New York a few years back?"

"Hard not to," said Dean, his gaze filled with a mixture of hero worship, curiosity, and suspicion.

"Well," Tony Stark's smile was strained. "That was just a hint of what's out there, hungry for human happy meals and destruction."

Faith raised her eyebrows. "Aliens?" She gave Dean a measured glance. "That's a new one."

The hunter huffed, a sound midway between a snort and a chuckle. "You hear that, Boston? Iron Man wants us to fight aliens."

Peter watched the volley carefully, looking back and forth between Faith, Dean, and Tony Stark. He had hardly managed to eat anything yet during dinner.

"When did you have in mind?" Faith asked the billionaire, her brown eyes gleaming. She rocked her chair back onto two legs and crossed her arms easily over her stomach. "I'm free Thursday. How about you, Dean?"

"Works for me."

"You're taking this whole aliens thing a little more . . . nonchalantly than I expected," said Stark as he lifted another forkful of watermelon to his mouth.

"Demons pop out of alternate dimensions every day," the Slayer brushed off his surprise, waving for Peter to hand her a napkin to wipe the burger grease off of her chin. "I've been sending them back to whatever hole they came from for twenty-odd years. And Dean? He's literally spent forty years in Hell. Not to mention that he and his brother stopped the Apocalypse - the Biblical one, not the damn miniature ones that keep popping up three times a decade."

Dean's face twisted into the shadow of a frown, but Tony appeared not to notice.

"Ye-es," said the superhero. "I read all about that on the way over here. Well, FRIDAY - that's the artificial intelligence who, among other things, runs my suit - speed-read the last three volumes of the Supernatural series on the way over here. Already learned the hard way not to read on the HUD when I'm flying over the Rockies. I may or may not have had to make major donations to the endangered bird activists after that. Anyway," he went on with an unconvincingly dismissive gesture, "I'm not saying the threat is _now_. I just know that it's soon. So I've been trying to make some new friends, friends of the, uh, resourceful and talented and not-Captain America type."

Dean's frown smoothed out somewhat. This made sense to him. "You're deepening the bench."

Tony snapped his fingers. "Exactly! So when the Spiderling over there told me he'd been spider-napped by a handful of literary characters who actually exist, well, I thought we might have a few things in common." At their blank stares, he explained, "You know, saving the world, unbelievably good looks, things like that."

"Funny thing about the world," said Dean slowly with a long sip of his beer. "No matter how many times you save it, somehow it always ends up needing saving again."

"Law of entropy," supplied the engineer briskly. "The universe tends toward chaos."

"That so?" But Dean was giving Stark a considering, measuring look. Finally coming to a decision, he stuck his hand over the table in their visitor's direction.

Tony glanced down at the extended limb in confusion. "What's this? We already did the shaky-hand part when I arrived. This some super secret hunter ritual?" He took the hunter's hand regardless. This second handshake was a universe away from the previous one. It remained firm, but not bone-crushingly so. Somehow, Tony fancied that he and Dean Winchester had just arrived at common ground.

"We're not spotlight kind of people," Faith interjected, observing the men's interaction and feeling that some ground rules needed to be laid. "We'll be more than glad to help take down whatever sons of bitches need taking down, but we aren't superheroes."

Laying his fork beside his plate, Tony Stark turned to her, "That's good," he said. "That's great, actually. Don't know if you've been following the news cycles for the last year and a half, but working with superheroes hasn't always turned out super well for me."

"So we've noticed," commented Dean. "Look, I'm as much for an anti-alien team-up as anybody, but are you always this chatty with people you just met and don't know?"

"But I do know you," Stark responded. "I've read every book ever written on the Winchesters by Carver Edlund, including the unpublished ones. I've reviewed FBI interview transcripts, local police department incident reports, and every file in the California DOJ system that there is about either of you. FRIDAY practically waltzed her way into the central Slayer databases - you should tell one Xander Harris to really think about getting better cybersecurity," he added helpfully. "I've listened to recordings of every single conversation you've had with Peter in the last twenty-four hours. Don't look at him like that; he didn't know the suit was recording him."

"What the f-" the hunter started, at the same moment that Faith barked, "Paranoid much?" Peter merely winced and became very occupied with the last remaining bite of coleslaw on his plastic plate.

Tony countered, "Can you blame me? Besides, I needed to make sure Peter was safe. Figuring out that you two were ideal candidates for 'Team Anti-Alien,'" he made air quotation marks with his hands, "was just a pleasant bonus."

"So," Dean scowled at him disdainfully, "you think you know all our dirty little secrets?"

"Hey, I didn't hack your cell phones. Which I easily could have," the other man pointed out. "I do have some respect for privacy."

"No, you don't," Faith called him out on the lie.

"No, I don't," admitted Tony with a grin. "But know we all know that we can trust each other."

"Do we?" grumbled Dean, the invasion of privacy having squashed much of his previous excitement.

Stark waved a hand impatiently. "If I was going to turn you in to the authorities, I would have done it already. I wouldn't have eaten two cheeseburgers and a bowl of watermelon first. That's just tacky."

Dean raised his eyebrows. "And you're never tacky?"

"Never," grinned Tony Stark. "Tacky's for millionaires. Billionaires should know better."

With that, the tension eased from the room, and the subject turned to whether or not Tony felt comfortable flying back to either New York or Malibu that night.

"You don't - you don't have to," proposed Peter. "You could, uh, maybe stay here?" he suggested with a pleading look to both Faith and Dean.

"It's only a three bedroom house," Faith remarked.

"Easy solution," said Tony. "We just have to figure out which one of us would be sharing with whom?"

"You offering?" teased Dean.

"That depends. You accepting?" Stark countered.

Waving her hands wildly, Faith interjected herself into the conversation. "Boys, boys. We can all three share, you know."

A bit slow on the uptake, Peter finally clapped his hands to his ears and yelled, "La la la la! Enhanced hearing! La la la la! I can still hear you!"

With a chuckle, Tony took pity on the teenage boy. "Don't worry, Pete. Flattered as I am, and trust me, I'm flattered," he glanced meaningfully at the others, "I am very much in love with one Ms. Virginia Potts, and my fiancée looks down on this kind of thing."

"Pity," Faith mourned. Her cell phone rang, and she stepped into the hallway that led to the downstairs bathroom to answer it, her voice carrying back into the kitchen to the others.

"Hello? Oh, hi. Yes, this is she. How can I help? What? I was there yesterday. Should be all taken care of. Oh. No, I didn't know. I'm sorry to . . . Yeah, I . . . Okay, I'm on my way."

She stuck her head back in. "Problem on the Flathead rez. Looks like I didn't count high enough last night and there's an extra fang running around the place. Wanna tag along, Peter? If we're gonna do this thing, might as well get started now."

The teenager nodded in nervous excitement, and he eagerly followed Faith out the back door into the garage. Left alone in the kitchen, the two men sat in silence until the purr of the car engine had faded away.

Finally, Stark rose to his feet. "Dean, can I talk to you about something?"

Somewhat confused, the hunter also stood. Hadn't they been talking all evening? "Sure," he replied, pushing his chair in. "Faith cooked, so I'm on dish duty. If you help me dry, you can ask as many questions as you want."

They loaded their arms with the dishes from the table and carried them over to the sink. Dean methodically scraped any leftover bits of meat into a cracked bowl and set the bowl onto the floor, where it was instantly rushed by a grateful Reggie. Giving the dog a friendly pat on the top of the head, Tony watched as the hunter tapped the plates each once on the rim of the trashcan to dislodge the remainder of their contents into the trash.

"You seem like the kind of guy who appreciates the more, uh, straightforward things," he observed.

"Mmm," grunted Dean, filling the sink with hot water and a splash of soap.

Tony continued, "So I'm just going to shoot from the hip here. I have two big questions."

"Okay?"

Now having permission to proceed, the other man began rambling. "One, how have you made things work with Faith? Because she's clearly a hell of a woman, and so is Pepper, and I don't know how to be good enough for her. Pepper, I mean. Faith seems pretty satisfied with whatever arrangement you two have going on here. And number two," he kept talking at lightning speed, never giving Dean a chance to speak, "how did you ever forgive your brother for siding with a demon over you?"

Dean whistled, long and low. "Wow." He finished rinsing the first plate and passed it over to Tony and his towel. "No foreplay, and you're not even going to take me to dinner first?"

"We just had dinner - thanks for the burgers by the way. Best ones I've ever had in Montana." They were also the first burgers that he had ever had in Montana, but Tony felt no need to announce that particular fact.

"First off, Stark, me and Faith? We're not like you and your girl. We're just a couple of semi-retired monster fighters who live together - and sometimes have sex," he added as an afterthought and handed over the second plate. Tony hurried to dry the still-damp plate and set it onto the drying rack on the counter.

Dean went on, "So I don't know how to tell you to fix things with your lady. I ain't no therapist - and if you're that concerned, maybe you should go see one. Just never tell my brother I said that, or he won't ever let me forget it." He finished the third plate, then said, "As for the other thing, let me guess - does this have anything to do with that Civil War we were talking about earlier?"

"I hate that name," grumbled Tony.

"It's a stupid name," Dean agreed. "And I bet you're plenty smart enough to think of a better one. But that's not my question. This is about whatever happened after you left Leipzig and tried to track down Captain Underpants, right?"

"How do you - "

The hunter ignored his surprise. "Got a lot more time on my hands than I used to have. And superheroes? Always interesting to read about those. So, what was it? Did Captain Tightie-Whities pick his old pal Comrade Crazypants over you?"

"Something like that," said Tony tightly. "Details are, uh, classified, so you won't be offended if I don't tell you the specifics."

"Yeah, that's okay," Dean waved this away, literally, accidentally sending droplets of water flying through the air from the metal bold that had held coleslaw. "I don't need to know. That's your business. You curious why I forgave Sam?"

"Yes."

Dean stared down at the sink. "That's easy - well, forgiving him wasn't easy. That was damn hard - and I'm still not entirely sure that I managed it. But the decision to forgive him, that was easy. 'Cuz he's my little brother, and I changed his damn diapers. Because for a long, long time, I knew that no matter what happened, I'd always have him, and he'd always have me. Sure, it hurt like a bitch. And the fact that the Edlund guy wrote about it and now anyone who reads those books finds out that my little brother who I -" Dean halted, took a deep breath, and shook his head. "Damn, see, I told you I wasn't sure if I'd forgiven him. I, uh, if you've read the books you know about the deal that I made."

"You sold your soul to bring him back to life. That's . . . That's Greek tragedy. Your life is a god-damned Greek tragedy," the other man commiserated.

"Huh. That why everything keeps sucking?" asked Dean rhetorically. "Anyway, I can't tell you if you should forgive Steve Rogers, for whatever it is that he did. If you want to, you can. If you don't want to, you don't have to. He ain't your brother."

"In those books, your friend Bobby Singer said that family doesn't end with blood?" Tony said with a trace of hesitance.

"Don't," Dean corrected him. "Family don't end with blood. You saying Steve Rogers is your family?"

"I . . I don't know." It was Stark's turn to look away, unable to meet those cold, assessing green eyes. "Once I thought, maybe," he told the linoleum floor beneath their feet. "Not now."

For a brief moment, Dean said nothing. Then, abandoning the dishes in the sink, he reached up to the cupboard over the fridge for two square glasses and an unlabeled bottle of amber liquid. He poured the glasses up to the halfway point and set one on the counter in front of Tony Stark. "Thing is, you're the one who gets to decide who's in your family. And if people don't do good by you, then you don't owe them anything."

"Says the man who forgave his brother for drinking demon blood," pointed out the engineer in a dark voice, eyeing the glass before him.

"Hey," shrugged Dean, downing his own drink in one go. "Do as I say, not as I do."

"Mmm. Ugh - what is this?"

"Faith gets it off one of the old ranchers. He runs his own still. It's free and it gets the job done."

The men continued to drink, first standing in the kitchen, then sitting at the table, and finally collapsing onto the couch. As the level in the bottle of homemade moonshine steadily crept lower and lower, they grew more companionable and relaxed, until at last Tony made a complete non sequitur and said, "How can I help?"

Dean coughed on a mouthful of whiskey. "Excuse me?"

"With Peter. Financially."

The hunter bristled. "It's what, one summer? Faith and me can handle it fine."

"Hmm." The billionaire swirled around the alcohol in the bottom of his glass. "Kids eat a lot, you know. I've seen that one down a large pizza in twenty seconds flat."

Accepting the necessity of surrender, Dean gave in. "Fine. You wanna send some money for his room and board, I won't say no. You wanna send some money for his driver's ed course, I won't mind."

"Driver's ed?" Tony vaguely remembered something about driver's ed from one of the hours of conversation FRIDAY had played on the way to that board meeting this morning, but the details eluded him.

"Boy needs a license."

"He lives in Queens."

"As if that matters. It's the spirt of the thing, Stark."

"Please call me Tony," the other man requested.

"Okay, it's the spirit of the thing, Tony."

Tony smiled. "That's better. What should his first car be, d'you think?"

"Now, that," said Dean slowly, pouring yet another round of drinks, "is an excellent question."

* * *

**June 14th, 2017, Missoula, Montana, 11:45 p.m.**

Faith stormed into Dean's bedroom without bothering to say 'hello,' collapsed face-first onto the bed and let out a noise that roughly translated to, "Arrrrrrruuuuuuuughhhhhh."

"That bad?" he asked pityingly, still pleasantly drunk and hopeful to avoid a hangover in the morning. Dean was grateful that he had stopped at least one or two drinks before incoherence.

"It was a disaster," moaned the Slayer, twisting her head so that she was not speaking directly into the pillow. "He's clumsy! Trips over his own feet, breaks tree branches when he walks - he made so much of a racket that the vampire could hear him coming a hundred yards away. We never even got close."

Intoxication loosened Dean's tongue enough for him to suggest, "You think about using him as bait?"

"Yes," admitted Faith, "but I couldn't do it. I don't think he's ready for this."

"Hmm?" He needed more details in order to follow her train of thought.

"Superheroes, robberies, it's all so . . . civilized. Slaying? Hunting? Kinda the opposite. I got a feeling he's gonna have trouble when the blood starts flowing."

Somewhere in the back of his booze-filled mind, Dean thought she might be right. "Maybe it will be a slow summer?" he ventured.

"Maybe," said Faith, her tone skeptical. "But I doubt it. Where we're involved, retirement or not, there's always, always blood."

Her grim pronouncement was sobering. "You're dark tonight. Was he _that_ bad?" the man queried.

Lifting her face out of her pillow, the Slayer looked up at him glumly. "Worse, Dean. He was worse. He's not used to fighting things that can smell his skin and hear his heartbeat."

"Mmm." While there was nothing he could do or say about that now, Dean did have one bit of good news. "I know something that will cheer you up."

"What?"

"Tony Stark's sleeping in your bed right now."

"And I'm not in it," mourned the woman, burying her face back into the bedcovers. "Don't remind me."

He remembered something else. "Sam and I are going to try to finish the fence tomorrow. Maybe Stark'll help."

"Shirtless?" Faith suggested hopefully.

Dean elbowed her. "You ever think with your upstairs brain?"

"My upstairs brain is a little busy right now freaking out about how to keep Spiderteen from becoming vampire chow."

"You still on that?" scoffed the hunter.

"Dean, he's like a puppy dog. They're gonna eat him if he gives them even half a window."

Clicking the bedside lamp on, he rolled onto his side to face her. "Hey, listen to me. He'll be okay. He's got Stark, he's got me, and he's got you. You managed to make Beck and Lil into two kickass Slayers - and word is that wasn't easy."

"Nnng," complained Faith.

Dean patted her on the shoulder and chuckled. "Easy, tiger. You don't got to save the world tonight. Plenty of time for that in the morning."

His words appeared to sink in, for the Slayer sat up on the edge of the bed long enough to tug off her boots and toss her belt and jeans onto the other side of the room. As she crawled beneath the covers, she asked, "Would you really have . . . you know . . . with Stark?"

Grinning, he dodged the question. "Not really applicable, is it? He's engaged to Potts."

"So," pressed Faith, "if we could find another Avenger, would you be willing to . . .?"

"This about your Thor fetish again?"

"Possibly."

Dean turned the lamp off and joined her beneath the comforter. "We can cross that bridge when we get there."

"That isn't a 'no,'" said Faith, choosing to remain the optimist.

"Mmmph."

"So . . . "

"Good night, Boston."

"Night, Dean."

The comfortable silence between them lasted for about thirty seconds, and then Faith rolled over onto her back and burst into giggles.

"What?" asked Dean groggily. Fatigue and the effects of the moonshine were beginning to get the better of him.

"I just remembered: Tony Stark is in my bed."


	6. Eight Days a Week

In the morning, Tony was surprised to find his alarm clock replaced by sunlight streaming in through a badly curtained window and the disrespectful twittering of birds. Not even songbirds, either, if the squawking of crows was anything to go by. The genius billionaire playboy philanthropist pulled yesterday's clothes on over his boxers and took another, more awake, less tipsy look at the room in which he had spent the night. Supposedly, the bedroom belonged to Faith Lehane, an escapee from the Boston foster system turned Dark Slayer turned reformed murderer, but the room itself was plain, simple, and free from the imprints of personality. Apart from the heavy bookshelves filled with ancient-appearing leather bound volumes and the locked cedar chest at the foot of the bed, the room could have come straight out of a slightly-out-of-fashion home decorating catalogue. The sheets were an bland cream, the duvet a respectably plain navy. There was no art on the walls, no clothes or shoes scattered across the floors - nothing, really, to show who it was who lived here.

His curiosity only partially satisfied, Tony stuck his head out into the hallway and listened. The upstairs was deserted, and the house itself was silent. He ventured downstairs to the living room and the kitchen, both of which were deserted. Someone had left a neon green sticky note pasted to the kitchen table, with a hastily scribbled message, "Outside."

Mildly intrigued, he opened the back door that led off of the kitchen and stepped onto the concrete patio. Now he could definitely hear more than birdsong. Across the yard, Winchester and Lehane were occupied with lifting ridiculously tall boards against a halfway completed fence and nailing them into place. Bickering voices carried to him on the morning air.

"I still think Sam should be doing this, not me," grunted the Slayer, a plank balanced on her shoulder.

As she turned, Dean was forced to duck into a crouch in order to avoid being whacked in the face by said plank. "Watch it," he complained. "You heard Caroline this morning - guess Livvy's ear infection was the real deal."

"Maybe," admitted Faith. She caught a glimpse of their guest, standing on the patio and surveying them. The woman gave a small wave and hollered, "Morning, Tony!" She beckoned for him to join them.

Barefoot, Tony stepped out into the dewy grass. If either Rhodey or Pepper knew he was here, he thought to himself wryly, they would throw a fit to be reckoned with. He was still supposed to be taking it slow, not sneaking off and sending teenagers to investigate two of the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives. Tony's already low opinion of the competence of the FBI had sunk still lower since Peter's spider-napping and his brief foray into researching the career criminals who were squinting against the bright light of the morning and smiling at him.

"Morning," he replied when he reached them, impressed in spite of himself at the ease with which Lehane was maneuvering the oaken boards. No gloves, perfect body mechanics, and no signs of effort. So the lore about Slayers being enhanced was factual after all. Fascinating.

Winchester looked up from digging a shallow trench for the next part of the fence to answer Tony's unspoken question. "Pete took Reggie for a run." 

Tony raised an eyebrow. "Peter? Running? For fun?"

"It's an important part of training," Faith replied. "Slayer training, hunter training - unless you want to get eaten, that is. Isn't it a part of superhero training?"

The billionaire shifted awkwardly from one bare foot to the next. "Peter hasn't had, uh, that it to say, there's no organized, um . . ."

"You aren't training the kid?"

"Kind of difficult to manage unnoticed, what with trying to keep the whole secret identity thing a secret. I made him the suit, and he's been picking up stuff as he goes, but it's not as though there's a whole pre-Avengers thing going on at the compound. Not anymore," he added grimly.

"Don't worry." Dean released his shovel just long enough to clap Tony on the shoulder. "Faith here's the best at getting mini-Slayers up to snuff. We've got this," he said with confidence.

"Speaking of training," interjected the Slayer in question, "what did you have in mind? Besides the standard physical fitness, hand-to-hand fighting, dusting vamps, salt'n'burning ghosts, and taking on your basic demonic nasties - that we do free of charge."

Tony blinked disconcertedly at the phrase 'basic demonic nasties,' which was by no means a comforting expression. "Good question." He bent down to the pile of oak boards and carefully picked one up. They were every bit as heavy as they looked, and his estimation of the Slayer's strength grew. "Why don't we discuss it while we finish this fence?"

* * *

_I've got to do better_ , _I've got to be better_ , was the mantra sounding over and over again through Peter's head as his sneakers slapped against the pavement and Reggie jostled eagerly at his heels.

The Slayer's exasperation had not been lost on him the night before. Hours of trooping through an empty park on the outskirts of a resort town, and he had never been as uncomfortably aware of the ungodly amount of noise each and every step created. Super-stealth wasn't exactly a prerequisite for taking down muggers and carjackers. Whether beside him or just in front of him, the Slayer was the perfect picture of silence. Her footsteps were nothing more than the ghost of a rustle, her breathing seemed like more of a suggestion than an actual noise, and even her heart seemed to beat more slowly and softly than it had on the motorcycle ride over. Despite their long searching, they had found neither hide nor hair of anything more suspicious than a sleepy squirrel. Peter was keenly aware of Faith's disappointment on the ride back, and now as he ran with the dog, he found that her disappointment in last night's results had morphed into disappointment with himself.

_Stupid, stupid, stupid_ , he remonstrated, and he continued to sprint along the pavement, throwing all of his not-inconsiderable energy and stamina into staying just a few steps ahead of the German Shepherd. It was only around the third or fourth mile that Reggie began to tire, and Peter reluctantly turned around to head back to the house. The dog dropped down to a slow walk before they had gotten halfway home, and so the boy was forced to match his reduced pace.

By the time he reached the house, Mister Stark was gone. There had been an urgent call, explained Dean, wiping sweat away from his dripping forehead. Some board of directors emergency meeting regarding the new Stark Tech launch scheduled for next week. Tony was sorry that he hadn't been able to stay and say good bye.

"That's okay," mumbled Peter, feeling very lonely and almost a bit abandoned. "So," he rubbed his hands together and attempted a a cheerful smile, "what's the plan for today?"

"Fence," announced Faith around a mouthful of nails.

"Maybe a movie later," Dean added.

"And tomorrow?" the Slayer smiled grimly. "Tomorrow we start for real."

* * *

Faith's definition of "training for real" felt uncomfortably close to boot camp. Each morning at six o'clock on the dot, Peter would be woken by an enthusiastic Reggie leaping onto his bed and giving him a tongue bath. The first time this happened, he pushed the cheerful dog off to find the Slayer standing in the doorway, already dressed in running gear. After a quick, imperative stop in the bathroom, Peter was hustled out the door and off on a three-mile run with Reggie and Faith.

The Slayer was some special kind of sadist, he realized near the mile and a half mark. She had managed to pick a pace that was just beyond where he could comfortably run, and she stuck to it like glue even when he began to tire. Peter was befuddled. Since the weekend of the spider bite, he had suddenly become the fastest kid in gym class - a fact that he had struggled to hide. Now, the instant that he began lagging, Faith kicked it into an even higher gear, and he was forced to accelerate to keep up.

When they got back to the house, the teenager was reluctantly coming to terms with the fact that he might need to work on his cardio fitness. Unperturbed by the sweat dripping from her forehead, Faith led him down the hallway off the kitchen that led to the locked steel door Dean had called a library. The door was open, and Peter followed her inside.

The "library" must have once been the master bedroom, for it was far larger than he had been expecting. Three of the walls were lined with floor-to-ceiling bookcases made of industrial steel. The floor itself was a dark charcoal concrete, except for the half that was covered by a thick rubber gymnastics training mat. A sturdy wooden table was pushed up against the one book-free wall. Dean was sitting on top of the table, in pajamas, dressing gown, and slippers.

"Morning," he said cheerfully, hopping down onto the concrete floor. He reached behind him for a pair of heavy black boxing mitts, the kind meant for being punched into. Once he had slid the mitts onto his hands, he lifted them up into a guard position and rolled his shoulders back to loosen them up. "Come on, Spiderkid. Let's see what you've got."

"Uh, can we, can I get some water first?"

Grinning, Faith patted him on the shoulder. "Have fun, boys."

"Faith? Faith?"

But she had breezed away, and moments later the coffee pot beeped. With a sinking feeling, Peter turned back to face Dean Winchester. "Is this where you tell me to go easy on you?" he asked weakly.

The hunter laughed. "Give me your worst, Pete. Got to know what we're working with, here."

After fifteen minutes of Dean calling out instructions - right hook, left jab, left uppercut, right cross - in a random order with ever-increasing speed, the man pulled off the mitts and tossed them onto the table with his robe and slippers. Barefoot, in flannel pajama pants and a threadbare t-shirt, he beckoned at Peter to come at him. Peter did, and almost instantly found himself landing on his butt on the training mat, with a new burning pain blossoming on the left side of his ribs.

The nasty grin on Dean's face was feral as he pulled the teenager back up to his feet. "Again," said Dean.

"Is this the part where you teach me not to fight fair?" ventured Peter.

His grin widening, the hunter only repeated, "Again."

At the end of morning training, Peter was finally allowed to get himself that drink of water and to take a shower. By eight-thirty, he was shuffled out the door and into the backseat of the polished chevy Impala. He spent most of the day at the garage with Dean, which was a fascinating experience in and of itself.

Sure, the garage was nowhere near as fancy as the robotics lab at school, but the hunter's patience was near endless. He glibly explained Peter's presence by telling his boss that the boy was his second cousin who had gotten into too much trouble at home. Then he gave the teenager a wrench and set him to work removing hubcaps on a car that needed its tires rotated. Dean kept him busy all day with useful tasks at Peter's skill level, and when there was a pause in the stream of cars needing maintenance, he began teaching him more about motors.

In the evening, there was dinner and more fighting, this time with Faith while Dean watched and hollered out tips, pointers, and the occasional catcall. When he fell into bed at nine that night, Peter was footsore, bruised, exhausted, and exhilarated. Until now, he had not realized quite how much he had longed for approval and recognition of his role as Spiderman. Despite the jokes about his needing to drink milk at dinner to grow strong bones, that recognition was exactly what Dean and Faith provided him, and he drank it in eagerly.

Now, if only he could fix his restless nights and talk them into giving him the wifi password, everything would be awesome.

* * *

On his fourth night in Montana, a horrible, animal noise startled Peter out of sleep. The noise, somewhere between a howl and a scream, made the hairs on his arm stand up on end, and it filled him with an instant flash of fear and dread. He swung his legs out of bed and tiptoed out onto the landing. A faint light was drifting upwards along the staircase, and he followed it down to the entryway and then to the living room.

He froze in the doorway, glancing awkwardly from the muted Western on the television screen to the two people curled up on the old leather couch. The Slayer had somehow managed to tuck herself almost entirely away into Dean Winchester's side. Her eyes were wide open, glassy, and expressionless in the dim glow from the television, and she clung with spider-like fingers to the man's arm where it draped over her like a security blanket. As the teenager approached, Dean's head swiveled around the back of the couch, and his gaze narrowed.

"I heard shouting," said Peter lamely. "Thought somebody might be in trouble."

The look that Dean snuck the top of Faith's head was subtle, but not for nothing had Peter been bitten by a radioactive spider. He saw the look, just as clearly as he saw the man tighten his hold on the Slayer.

"Must've been the movie." It was a lie, and they both knew it. "You should go back to bed," suggested the hunter meaningfully.

"Yeah. I - uh . . ." For a moment, Peter considered admitting to his own run of insomnia and bad dreams and asking Dean if he, too, could stay. The tight expression on the older man's face warned him that tonight was not the night for that. "Good night, Dean."

Peter perched at the top of the stairs, out of sight but not out of earshot. There had been a shout. There had been a scream - and it had not been the Western. He was more than reasonably certain that it had been Faith, but whether she and Dean had been on the couch before the noise, he couldn't say.

"Dean?" came the whisper from the Slater, shaky and snuffly.

When he answered, Dean's voice was far, far gentler than Peter had ever heard it. "Kid went back upstairs. You with me now, Faith?"

"Don't go."

"You plannin' on leavin' me?"

"No."

"Good. Me either. Close your eyes, tiger. I'll be right here when you open 'em."

The teenager lingered on the landing for a moment longer, listening to the dull rat-a-tat-tat of gunfire on the speakers downstairs. He was curious, embarrassed, and even a little ashamed of his curiosity, keenly aware that he had never been intended to hear that conversation. Faith and Dean tended to be open with him, pathologically so - he already knew far more about demonic breeding rituals than he had ever, ever wanted to, and it had only been three days - but this was not the sarcasm and flirting and silent arguments via glares and grimaces. This had been serious. This had been real. This had belonged strictly to the "Not for Peter's Ears" box.

For once, he actually felt guilty for eavesdropping.

* * *

The next morning, there was no six a.m. run or six-thirty sparring matches. Peter slept in until half past eight, when he stumbled first into the shower and then into the kitchen, following the entrancing scent of bacon and syrup. Clad in her waitress uniform, the Slayer was laying out fresh slices of bacon into a sizzling cast iron skillet on the stove. Dean must have already left for work, because he wasn't there monopolizing the bacon pile.

"I'm, uh," Peter paused, struggling to find words. He needed to apologize for walking into the living room the night before. He just didn't know how.

"It is what it is," said the Slayer nonchalantly, but in a way that indicated she wasn't interested in further discussion. She crossed the kitchen to turn over the waffle maker, which Peter had not noticed until now. "Everyone gets bad nights. Last night was me, the other day it was Dean, and your first night here, it was you."

Suddenly uncomfortable, Peter pulled a chair out from the kitchen table and sat. "Me?" He croaked, his mouth dry. He remembered having a particularly bad dream that night - the airport in Germany and Coney Island, all mixed together in fire, with Captain America solemnly warning him that he had to bring his daughter, the Winter Debutante, home by ten or face the consequences. "What do you - How do you -"

Faith had returned to her bacon, and she pressed the slices deeper into the skillet with a spatula. "I poked my head in to check on you, saw you muttering and rolling around."

"Why didn't you say anything?"

She shrugged. "You stopped right after. And anyway, it wasn't really my place."

"Oh." Peter considered this for a moment. "Was I loud?" he asked, ducking his head in embarrassment. "Is that why you -?"

"No." The waffle maker dinged, and Faith busied herself with removing the perfectly golden brown waffle and pouring in a new scoop full of batter. "I was just checking in on you."

"I'm not a little kid," protested Peter, unable to keep the sulkiness out of his voice. "I'm sixteen."

"I know," replied the Slayer calmly. "Sometimes you need extra checking in on at that age." She set a plate of bacon and waffles on the kitchen table in front of him. "G-d knows I did."

It was there again, that allusion to a past that was not quite right. Peter knew far more about Dean's youth than maybe he should have (courtesy of the Supernatural books), but he knew almost nothing about Faith's, other than that she had a sometimes strained relationship with Slayer headquarters and that Andrew had called her the "Dark Slayer".

"Eat up," ordered Faith, chomping down on a slice of crunchy bacon while corralling half of the already-cooked slices into a narrow Tupperware container. "I told Dean I'd bring him breakfast. And after that, I'm taking you to the university. Sam says they're still accepting enrollment for their late summer session."

Peter nearly spit out his waffle. What the heck was going on with all these adults who seemed to want to parent him? Respect - attention - from adults, that was one thing, but parenting? May was bad enough on her own, and having Mister Stark's expectations on top of that didn't make things any easier. And now Faith and Dean were joining the bandwagon? His luck sucked. "You're sending me to school?" he gasped.

"You can't spend all day at the garage or here introducing Reggie to the finer side of reality TV," Faith pointed out. "Besides, wasn't part of the reason you were in summer school because you failed history?"

"I . . ." It was brutally unfair of her to bring this up. He should never have told Faith and Dean everything about his summer classes - but the Slayer had been adamant about not letting him stay without a full disclosure, and Dean had agreed with her. Shamefacedly, Peter admitted, "I may have forgotten to turn in a few assignments ... or to study for the final."

"So why not retake it at the college level? That way you get credit. Plus, I hear the ancient world history teacher for the summer is kinda hot," grinned Faith.

"It's Sam, isn't it?"

"Maybe."

"And he's gonna be really uptight about me turning in work, isn't he?"

"Sam has occasionally been know to have a giant stick up his ass, yes."

Great. Now he had three extra parents. "Okay," sighed Peter in defeat, stabbing his second waffle with his fork, "you win."

"I always do," said Faith, but the cheeriness in her voice rang hollow. "I'm going to pack my work bag. Think you can be finished and have your teeth brushed in ten?"

"I got a choice?" Peter grumbled. He instantly regretted it.

The Slayer only snorted. "I see you're taking after Dean already. Don't worry; there should be a calculus class open, too."

His reluctance disappeared. "Calculus? Really?"

Faith shook her head. "Kid, you're kind of the Webster's definition of a nerd. You know that, right?"

Peter said nothing, merely smiled up at her with the big innocent grin that never worked on Aunt May but sometimes worked on Mister Stark.

"Ten minutes," Faith reminded him.

"Yep, ten minutes, you got it!" The teenager began shoveling waffle into his mouth at a disturbing speed.

As soon as he could hear her footsteps on the staircase, Peter pulled out his cell phone and continued updating his latest email to Ned.

. . . .

_Dear Ned,_

_Sorry I haven't been writing/texting back. It's . . . you'd never believe where I am. Okay, maybe you would. But don't read this in public. And if you do, I'm not responsible for whatever weird noises you're about to make, got it? Good._

_So guess what? Turns out that those Supernatural books aren't just fiction. Sam and Dean Winchester? They're real. And that brown-eyed girl character you were always reading fan-fiction about? She's real, too. Only she's a Vampire Slayer who goes by the name of Faith and who doesn't always play nicely with the rest of the Vampire Slayers - yeah, I said that. Slayers, plural._

_As for how I got here, it's a long story. I'll tell you when I see you in August. All I can say is that it's weird and crazy - like, sometimes I can't tell if Faith is quoting Chicago or reciting a cautionary tale from her Dark Slayer days to keep me in line. Not that there are too many ways to get out of line in Montana. But sometimes it's almost normal - like yesterday when Dean and Faith got into a shouting argument over the Bride of Chucky. I'm not kidding. I could probably write a whole term paper on that movie now._

_Anyway, the Impala is every bit as glorious as Edlund described. I haven't actually faced down any monsters or ghosts or vampires since I got here - Dean said something about me being clumsy. Can you believe it? I'm not *that* clumsy._

_Dang it, got to run. I'm supposed to have brushed my teeth by now. Try not to freak out too much, okay? I'll text you when I get a minute._

_Bye,_

_Peter_


	7. Full On Swayze

A/N: I promised myself that I would keep this fic down to ten chapters . . . but I just split chapter 7 (It was about 9600 words), so now there will be at least 11. Oops! Have a fantastic weekend, everyone!

June 19th, 2017, Missoula, Montana, 7:00 p.m.

"Good job in class today, Peter. And thanks again for being okay with staying late while I got some work done on my dissertation."

Peter looked away from the window glass and the beginnings of the clear summer sunset outside to glance at the driver of the red pick-up truck. "Thanks for taking me home," he replied quickly, reminding himself that this was just another completely normal night hitching a ride with the grad student teacher of his history class. A grad student teacher who just happened to be no one other than Sam effing Winchester. "Faith doesn't get off until eight, so . . ."

This was no big deal, right? The teenager struggled to convince himself. Right? In some ways, Dean was definitely the easier Winchester brother to get, due to their "mutual fan-boying" as Faith referred to it.

Thankfully, before he could stick his foot in his mouth, Sam pulled up outside the large two-story clapboard house. With another round of thank-you's, Peter scrambled out of the car, his backpack heavy with the university-preferred history textbook, his brain still tangled up in the history of Greek city-states and the Peloponnesian Wars. Easily dodging the moon-sized craters in the front sidewalk, he walked into the unlocked house.

The noise of the television drew him into the living room. Peter stared in disbelief at the roomful of writhing bodies on the screen, recognizing it vaguely as Dirty Dancing, one of his aunt's favorite cheesy old movies. Dean was sitting at one end of the couch, the German Shepherd curled up against his side, and he was grinning at the TV fondly.

"Hey, Spiderman," the hunter said, looking up when the teenager paused in the living room doorway.

"Hi . . ." Peter took a moment, letting the incongruous picture of Dean and Dirty Dancing sink in. "You . . . this is a, uh . . . you watch chick flicks?"

"Swayze always gets a pass," the man said seriously. He gestured to the other end of the couch. "Pop a squat."

Sandwiched comfortably between the arm of the sofa and Reggie's rear end, Peter managed to endure the ridiculousness onscreen for another thirty minutes, before finally clearing his throat and asking in a hesitant voice, "What is the point of this movie? I mean, not to be rude or anything, but I'm not really getting why everybody talks about it so much. It's just a rom-com . . . with dancing?"

To his surprise and relief, Dean did not seem offended. "It's really simple, kid," he explained, his green eyes gleaming in the light from the television screen. "Chicks dig this movie for exactly one reason - they all wanna be the one dancing with Swayze."

Scrunching his eyes a little bit, the teenager squinted more intently at the television, where the actor in question was currently shirtless, his upper body tanned and well-muscled. "Yeah," he said after a moment's examination. "I guess I can see that. And, uh, is that why you like it?" he joked. "You wanna be dancing with Swayze, too?" Peter gulped at his own bravado and instantly longed to take that last comment back, but the older man only laughed.

"Maybe," he chuckled and shook his head. "Nah, it's cause Swayze's the man, and he's good with the chicks. Now just watch and learn, Pete. Swayze school is in session."

Near the end of the flick, the front door creaked open and then thudded closed again. A few seconds later, the Slayer walked in, a plastic bag filled with take-out containers dangling from one wrist. She hovered in the entryway. "Swayze?"

"Swayze," Dean replied.

Snickering, Faith made a circuit of the couch. She paused just long enough to thoroughly ruffle Peter's hair before perching on the cracking black leather sofa and then sliding halfway down into Dean's lap, unwilling to disturb the sleeping German Shepherd still occupying the middle of the couch.

"You surviving, kiddo?" she asked as she leaned around man and dog to set the pile of take-out on the coffee table.

Peter smiled. "I think so."

"Good." The Slayer untied the top of the bag and began passing out styrofoam containers and plastic packets of silverware and napkins. "Roast beef, mashed potatoes, gravy - and vegetables," she added meaningfully. "Which you both need to eat."

"Thank G-d for the diner." Dean ripped open his silverware packet and popped the top open on his dinner. Ignoring the vegetable comment, he immediately dug in to the lake of mashed potatoes. "If you didn't work there, we'd be stuck with my cooking repertoire - boxed mac and cheese, boxed mac and cheese with hot dogs, or boxed mac and cheese with marshmallows."

"Marsmallows and macaroni? Ew," said Peter.

"Don't sell yourself short, Dean. Pretty sure I've seen you make a pb&j before," teased Faith. "Wait . . . hold up - we have marshmallows?"

"No idea."

"Cool." For a few minutes more, they ate in silence, and then the woman commented, "We did that once," nodding towards the screen to the talent show, where Johnny and Baby had finally managed to land their big lift outside of the water.

"Really?" spluttered Peter, sneaking a glance at the hunter and Slayer, who both had globs of brown gravy at the corners of their mouths.

"Damn straight," said Dean, his cheeks bulging with food. He swallowed and went on, "Nailed it on the first try. By the way, Peter," he added as the entire cast began to dance, "I got a couple a' presents for ya."

Confused, Peter frowned slightly. "It isn't my birthday."

"I know. Had to have Stark email me a copy of your birth certificate to get you enrolled at the college, remember? Anyway, you're going to want this." The hunter twisted to the side, half-crushing Faith against the side of the couch, and fished in his back pocket, finally pulling out a pendant on a black leather cord.

The Slayer pushed him back towards Reggie with an irritated, "Move."

Ignoring her, Dean opened his palm and held the necklace out in Peter's direction.

Peter accepted the gift and lifted it up for a more thorough examination. Up close, the teenager could make out the finer details of the pendant, which was made of black-stained steel. At the center was a five-pointed star inside the innermost of two double circles. Spiky black flames ran around the outside of the second circle, making the entire pendant two inches in diameter at its widest point. The design looked vaguely familiar, but he struggled to realize where and when exactly he had seen it before.

"What is it?" he asked curiously.

"Talisman," came the answer. "You put it on, and do not - I repeat, do not take it off. Prevents demon possession."

"What?"

Faith snorted. "Did Andrew fail to mention that as one of the occupational hazards of our line of work? Welcome to the big leagues, kid."

"Demon possession?" echoed Peter. "I thought that was more of a Catholic church thing?"

Frowning, Dean said, "Thought you read the books."

"I did," he hurried to explain. "I just didn't memorize them. That was Ned. Besides - didn't you tell me that all the gates of Hell were locked up?"

The adults exchanged a rather shifty glance. "For now," agreed Dean at length. "Doesn't mean they'll stay that way. And doesn't mean we'll get any heads up when the lock breaks."

"Oh." Digesting this, Peter slipped the leather cord over his head. The anti-possession charm rested against his sternum, and he could feel the chill of the steel even through his t-shirt. A new thought struck him. "What about you guys? I haven't seen you wear one of these."

With a grim smile, the hunter said, "That's because necklaces get lost easy. So I've got something a little more permanent." He tugged the collar of his undershirt down just far enough so that Peter could see the inky black sigil tattooed beneath his collarbone. Now the teenager remembered where he had seen that symbol before - on his first full day in Montana, when both Sam and Dean had built fence shirtless.

"Does - uh, Faith, do you have one of those?"

"Kind of," she answered easily, gesturing to the tattoo on her right arm, the one that looked half like barbed wire and half like some touristy tribal design.

"That works against demons, too?"

"Not exactly. More like it keeps every demon out but one. And he ain't much of a problem these days, not since I staked his ass."

"One more thing - " For a second time, Dean repeated his twist and wriggle to get into his back pocket, and for a second time, Faith grumbled about being squashed by Bigfoot's uglier cousin. Pretending not to hear her, the hunter dropped a small square of laminated plastic onto the square of leather couch cushion between Reggie and Peter.

Shocked, the teenager stared down at his own glossy photo looking back up at him.

State of Montana Limited Learner's Permit.

Name: Peter Parker  
Address: 2011 Shoshone Dr.  
Missoula, MT 59803  
Height: 5'8"  
Weight: 141 lb  
Hair: Brown  
Eyes: Brown

Correctly interpreting the silence as amazement, Dean grinned. "Have fun, kid."

Peter found his voice. "But I haven't taken the test!"

The man shrugged. "Did some research, and there was no way to get you this legally without forging a few documents anyway. So I figured we might as well skip the hassle and just get you the permit."

"Wow - that's just - wow. This is awesome! Can I hug you?" he asked tentatively.

Laughing, Dean said, "Kid, haven't I taught you anything about 'No chick flick moments?'"

"We just finished watching Dirty Dancing!"

"That's different. That's cause - "

"Swayze always gets a pass," all three of them finished in unison.

"Remember, this is for cars only," the hunter pointed out. "No motorcycles."

"But Faith has - "

Under her breath, the Slayer mumbled, "Don't drag me into this."

"Uh uh." Dean shook his head. "Just because she has a death wish machine doesn't mean that you're getting one."

"A death wish or a machine?" asked Peter, and then he wished he hadn't, because the scowl that slammed across Dean's face was nothing short of terrifying.

"You," the man pointed at Peter with one thick, angry finger, "are way, way too young to have a death wish."

"Gotta wait until you're at least nineteen." Faith's smile was equally scary, if a bit more sad.

Distracted from the motorcycle question, he wondered, "What . . . what happened when you were nineteen?"

"Woke up from a coma, realized the world had been so busy moving on that there wasn't any place in it left for a girl like me . . ." Faith stared at the credits on the television screen and blinked. "Didn't see much point to living for a while after that."

"And then you met Dean?" hazarded Peter.

"Nah." the woman snorted. "You and your friend have been reading too much on the internet. A lot of things happened. One of these days, I'll tell you. Not tonight."

"Why not?"

"Because I've got a six a.m. shift, and Sam told me your first midterm is in three days. Don't you need to study or something?"

"I'm starting to think that summer school in Queens would have been more fun," muttered Peter sotto voce.

Faith slid off of the couch and rose to her feet, reaching her arms up towards the ceiling and stretching out first her right and then her left shoulders. "Oh, come on. Don't say that. Andrew's been sending me some promising data. Looks like there's a pack of demons moving south through Alberta. If we're lucky, they'll come our way."

"If we're lucky?" the teenager clarified, more than a little disturbed by the Slayer's amused expression.

Dean answered for her. "We've been thinking it's about time to take the training wheels off, kiddo. You feel ready?"

Not a hundred percent sure what that meant, Peter shrugged. "Uh, sure? I - I guess so?"

"Good. Now rest up. Driving lessons start day after tomorrow."

June 20th, 2017, Stark Tower, New York, New York, 2:30 p.m.

Tony was drawn out of his careful study of the newest blueprint designs for Rhodey's leg braces when the raucous noise of AC/DC cut out and Friday's brisk, professional tones took their place. "Boss, you've got a call from Montana."

The engineer froze, his fingers outstretched in a crooked gesture, halfway through increasing the size of the hologram in order to improve visualization of the intricate details of the bioelectrics system. "Peter?" he asked, careful to keep both excitement and apprehension out of his voice. Not that it mattered. Fri wasn't exactly big on the whole judging him thing, thank G-d.

"Dean Winchester, boss."

Hmm. Less exciting than a call from Peter, but practically guaranteed to be just as interesting. After pressing a tiny button on his bluetooth earbuds, he cleared his throat. "Tony Stark speaking."

"Hey, Tony." As always, the elder Winchester sounded as if he ate his cereal with gravel in the mornings instead of milk. "Hope this isn't a bad time."

"Nope." Leaning out over the top of his work bench, Tony returned to his holograms, maximizing the neuromuscular interface and frowning at the point where the interface ought to connect with Rhodey's posterior tibial nerve. Something was wrong here, but he couldn't quite identify it yet. "An hour ago would've been tight, but somehow I managed to survive yet another S.I. board meeting, and I blocked off the afternoon for some personal projects, so I've got nothing but time. How's Peter?"

"He's good."

Terse. Well, that was consistent with nearly everything that the engineer had ever read or heard about Dean Winchester. Tony could handle terse. It was nice to deal with blunt and succinct after all the politicking of board meetings. "Yeah?"

"Yeah." The hunter softened and relaxed into almost being talkative. "Kid's super bright, super gifted. Faster than me or Faith, an' stronger than both of us put together." It wasn't quite gushing, but in Tony's admittedly-limited experience, this was fairly close to ecstatic for the other man.

Dean went on, "He's just gotta learn how to use it, that's all. Discipline, technique, endurance. It's easy to run faster than spit when you want to, or when you've only got to for five minutes. It's when you've been trying to outrun something that wants to chomp on your for the last hour and your ankle's jacked up and your head's spinning from adrenaline or dehydration or blood loss - that's where the actual work comes in."

Frowning at his own work, Tony wondered, "Incidentally, just how fast does spit run? Don't remember that coming up in my engineering classes."

"It's an expression, Stark."

Aha. And there they were, back to the gruff and snapping. The engineer said nothing. He had learned the hard way with the Ex-vengers that sometimes the best thing was to wait for someone to come to you. When you chased after them, they only kept running.

After a moment, Dean seemed to realize that Tony hadn't been making fun of him, for he continued, "Point is, the kid learns ridiculously fast - ten, fifteen times faster than me or Sam ever did. He's still holding back on his punches, though. Says he only uses as much force as he needs to get the job done, and I hope he actually means that. 'Cause there's no way he did all those tricks at Leipzig if he only hits like a twelve-year-old."

Despite himself, Tony grinned with pride. "And the school?"

"You're thorough."

"I'm asking because his aunt really wants to know."

"Uh huh, sure." The other man's amused disbelief was audible. "He's doing okay there, too. Kicking ass in calculus, making solid A-minuses on his papers in that history class. Got a test coming up soon, so we'll see how that goes. But like I said, he's a good, smart kid."

This next question was one that May had actually threatened Tony at bread knife-point with disembowelment if he didn't ask. "And he hasn't gotten into trouble? No sneaking out or anything like that?"

"Nah," said Dean dismissively. "The dog sleeps in his room. He'd let us know if Pete snuck out."

"And the sleeping?"

Dean swore under his breath, then said, "He ain't won bad dreams bingo yet, if that's what you're asking."

Tony accidentally shoved his entire arm through the hologram in shock. Electric tingles crept along his fingers and forearm, and he jerked his hand back. "Bad dreams . . . bad dreams bingo?"

"That's right," the man sounded satisfied. "You want in?"

Curiosity battled with a voice in Tony's head that sounded suspiciously like Pepper. After five seconds of intense struggle, curiosity won. "What's the prize?"

"Half an old bottle of Xanax."

"Please don't give Peter Xanax," Tony blurted, his heart rate accelerating with concern. He didn't even want to imagine what awful things might happen to Peter - or what giant scrapes the kid would get into in a bento-riven haze.

"You kidding me?" Winchester laughed, and Tony's pulse gradually calmed down. "Kid already gets comatose when he passes out. Last thing he needs is some of daddy's little helper. 'Sides, Faith and I already talked. If he wins, she'n'me're splitting the Xanax. We'll get him a pack of Skittles or something."

Biting his lip, the engineer turned away from the projected blueprints, finally accepting the fact that his concentration was subpar, and that any work he managed by some small miracle to accomplish would have to be redone when he wasn't being distracted by the fear that he might have sent Peter to live with drug-addicted, mentally ill criminals. "So," he started, reminding himself that he could tune into the feeds from the handful of cameras that he had left on his visit to Montana, "what did you call about?"

Unaware of Tony's discomfort, Winchester kept talking. "Finally did that thing we discussed the other day and got Peter a license. Not exactly legal, but as long as he doesn't spill the beans to one of the boys in blue, it should pass inspection. You can tell his aunt that we're not allowing him on any bike other than an eight-speed."

"Thanks."

"What - what did you tell her about us, anyway? You never did say."

Tony cleared his throat, "Oh, just that Peter was spending the summer at one of our outreach facilities in Missoula. Learning about nature and the great outdoors, definitely going to make an A in a college history course."

Dean snorted in disbelief. "And she bought that?"

"I am pretty convincing, you know," the engineer protested in mock-offense. "The whole billionaire philanthropist thing works well with the ladies and the motherly crowd."

"That ain't the only thing that works well with the ladies."

"See? This is why I told FRIDAY that you were my favorite Winchester brother when she was reading those books to me. Didn't I, Fri?"

"Yes, boss," replied FRIDAY, sounding amused. "You also said that -"

"Anyway," Tony interrupted her, "my girl Fri's depositing a thousand dollars into your checking account as we speak."

Far off in Montana, Winchester choked and began coughing. "A thousand?" he spluttered when he could breathe again. "For what?"

Tony grinned. It was nice to surprise people every now and then. And he always felt more than a little sense of pride when he could manage to flabbergast someone so thoroughly and completely. "Tuition, books for the kid. New pants for you?" he suggested.

"My clothes are fine," growled Dean, his voice extra-gravelly with irritation.

"Suit yourself. I just don't want anybody living off Ramen."

"Hey," complained the hunter. "Don't knock Ramen. That stuff's got me to the age of twenty."

Tony chuckled. "Me, too. Woulda starved in college without it."

"Huh."

There was a pause, and Tony wondered if Dean, too, realized that once again they were staring at each other across the wide, wide gulf of age and money and education and upbringing that separated them and finding out they weren't that different after all. Or perhaps Tony was the only one prone to flights of fancy like that.

"You know," said Dean, clearing his throat. "You aren't so bad. For a rich guy."

The engineer would consider that a victory. "That's what I keep telling people," he beamed, spinning around in his desk chair and kicking his sneakers up onto the desk. "Think you can make that thousand last the month?"

"The month? Hell, man, I can make it last the entire summer."

"Your choice," Tony shrugged. "Consider it an investment in the further development of my Stark Industries outreach facilities in Missoula."

"Just because I may be starting to like you, that don't mean I work for you," Dean warned him seriously.

"Oh, I know." The engineer grinned. "That's just how I'm putting it on my taxes."


	8. Crocodile Rock

**June 21st, 2017, Missoula, Montana, 5:00 p.m.**

There would be no catching the bus today, no hitching a ride with classmates or waiting for Sam to finish up whatever latest project he was working on before Peter could head home. Today was the big day. Today, Dean was taking off of work an hour early to pick him up. Today, Peter would learn how to drive.

He waited impatiently on the pavement outside the history department building, tapping his toes inside his sneakers and doing his best not to fidget. For a moment, he thought of calling Ned, but his ears were half-ringing still from the last time he had talked to his best friend on the phone.

"HE'S TEACHING YOU HOW TO DRIVE IN THE _IMPALA_!?" Ned, always reliably excitable, had bellowed in a voice at least an octave and a half higher than his normal one before starting to hyperventilate. "THAT'S LIKE IF TONY STARK LET YOU PILOT THE IRON MAN SUIT!"

"That's kind of how Captain Rhodes got War Machine," Peter pointed out. "You didn't shout quite so loud then."

"That's different - Iron Man was always real. I'm still getting used to this Supernatural thing. Not all of us adapt as quickly as you, Peter."

" _Us?_ "

"Just me," Ned had rushed to assure him. "There's no us. It's just me."

Still, Peter didn't think it was such a great idea to be continually filtering everything through Ned. So instead of getting out his phone, he just shifted his backpack, tugging at the straps until they were perfectly balanced before loosening them all the way and then starting to tighten them again.

The glossy black Chevy pulled up a mere five minutes late, and Dean parked it against the curb, only a half-inch of air between the concrete and the gleaming chrome of the wheels. The man got out. He tossed the keys to Peter and walked past him towards the building.

"I thought we were -"

"Give me a minute, kid. I gotta talk to Sam. Why don't you get settled? Move the seat and mirrors so's you can see, okay?"

"Okay."

Grinning, Dean trotted off, taking the steps into the history building two at a time.

"Okay," Peter repeated to himself. He approached the car gingerly. Circling around the rear bumper, the sixteen-year-old traced his fingers over the sleek exterior of the Chevy. He ducked inside the still-open door, sliding into the driver's seat.

While he had hit at least one growth spurt since the incident with the spider, Dean still had a few inches on him. Peter fumbled beneath the bench seat until he located the lever that would allow him to scoot forward. The teenager adjusted the mirrors as well, so that the curb stretching out behind him accompanied his own reflection in the mirror. Then he buckled his seat belt.

Staring forward, Peter wrapped his hands around the wheel. He placed them at ten and two, which was really the only thing he could remember from the one, single aborted driving lesson with Aunt May. Peter closed his eyes, focusing on the tough leather of the steering wheel, the tips of his toes tapping against the gas pedal. Encouraged by the feeling, he placed the key in the ignition and turned it.

The rumble that commenced was familiar and comforting. The Chevy might not be purring for him the way that it did for Dean, but at least he had managed to start it. Feeling bold, he reached for the stereo dial and darted from one radio station to another until he finally found something that he liked.

When Dean emerged from the history department several minutes later, his younger brother in tow, the teenager's nerves had dissipated almost entirely. He had the volume turned up on the radio, and his head bobbed up and down as he sang along to an old classic, "His palms are sweaty, knees weak. Arms are heavy. There's vomit on his sweater already - mom's spaghett-"

The angry slam of the passenger car door and a low snarl cut him off mid-word. "What the hell is that?" demanded Dean, and he silenced the stereo.

"Dude, I'm pretty sure that's Eminem," contributed his brother, clambering into the backseat.

Green eyes blazing, Dean jerked his head around to growl, "Stay out of it, Sam." He turned back to Peter. "Kid, I cannot _believe_ that I'm having to tell you this, but . . . There. Is. No. Rap. in my car. Ever. And the only m &m's allowed in my baby are the ones with peanuts."

"Sorry," Peter mumbled.

"Dean -"

"Can it, Sammy."

"Why did I agree to this?" Sam asked the air rhetorically. He tilted his head back against the window and closed his eyes.

"Because you wanted to escape from your toddler and you have no life outside of your family, school, and me'n'Faith?"

Sam's eyes and mouth gaped open as he protested "Dude!"

"Okay, Peter." Grinning now that he had successfully offended his brother, Dean slid his own seatbelt into the buckle. "Go on. Shift the car into drive."

He guided the teenager as he brought the gear shift down from 'park' into 'drive' and slowly crept away from the curb. They managed the first curve of the parking lot easily enough, and Peter approached the red stop sign separating the faculty lot from the narrow street that led to student and visitor parking. Traffic was hurrying down this road much faster than he had been driving in the parking lot. The teenager gulped as he braked as the Impala rolled to a smooth stop behind the sign.

From the backseat, Sam said as if sensing his discomfort, "Don't worry. You're doing fine. Besides, Dean's the one who taught me to drive. Well, Dad did some, but Dean did most of it. Crappy taste in music aside, he's really patient, unless you - "

"Brake!" bellowed Dean as Peter pressed the gas pedal and then was forced to swerve to the right to avoid a white Ford Escape that was continuing to barrel through the intersection "Brake! Brake!"

Peter belatedly remembered to switch his right foot from the gas pedal to the brake, and he slammed down on it so hard that Sam collided with Dean's headrest and Dean was forced to put a hand up to keep from whacking his nose on the dashboard.

"Unless you almost get his car T-boned," finished Sam with a grimace, rubbing his forehead.

Once he had quickly glanced around the car and done a visual check on everyone, Dean said without heat, "Walk it off, Sammy. All right, Pete. Guess now's a good time to review how four-way stops work. Whoever gets there first gets to go first. And if you get there at the same time, the car on the right goes first. You got it?"

"Yeah." Peter's heart was still beating frantically against his sternum from his first car crash near-miss. "I think so."

"You're doing just fine," Dean reassured him. "You should'a seen how bad Sam was when he started out. We got plenty of time, and you got plenty of space. Whenever you're ready, pull ahead."

* * *

**June 24th, 2017, Missoula, Montana, 2:15 p.m.**

"What are you doing?"

"Unghhhh." Had there not been sunlight creeping around the edge of her blinds, Faith would have taken her visitor for an intruder and thrown one of the knives that she kept under her pillow at his head. Instead, the Slayer merely rolled over and groaned.

The blankets were ripped away from her, and she looked up into the far too amused face of Dean Winchester. "It's two in the afternoon, Faith. You need to get up."

"Not happening," she protested sharply. "Not today."

"Andrew called. He's got some updates on that pack of demons you two've been tracking. Looks like they've made it into Idaho for sure this time."

Faith groaned again. "Ugh." She could deal with Andrew and the migrating pack of demons tomorrow. According to Andrew's reports, the demons had last attacked humans three days ago, when they ate a homeless man outside a bus stop in the middle of the night in Red Deer. Luckily, all the evidence pointed it to being a group of relatively unintelligent footsoldier animal-esque demons, rather than a group of chaos or Fyarrl demons. All things considered, it could be worse.

"Hey!" she complained as the one thing keeping her from murdering the universe was rudely jerked out from under her lower back. "What the hell, Dean?"

He tugged the cord out of the wall socket and folded the red heating pad under his arm. "This is coming downstairs with me. You need to eat. Come on, your majesty. Out of bed, into the shower, brush your teeth and get rid of that swamp dragon breath. By the time you finish, I'll have lunch ready."

At the mention of lunch, the Slayer's stomach rumbled. Food might not be a bad of an idea right now. And food that she did not have to prepare was even better. "Macaroni and cheese?" she suggested, accepting her inevitable defeat and swinging her legs over the side of the bed and taking the first few steps away from the bed and in the direction of the bathroom.

"With hot dogs in it," promised Dean in reference to the special dish that he had always made for his little brother when Sam was sick.

"And some hot chocolate?"

Rolling his eyes, the hunter said, "You realize you're acting like a baby, right?"

Faith whirled in the doorway and glared at him. "You try having stabbing pains in your spine and belly and vagina because fracking stupid evolutionary biology makes your body think it's just a spawn factory. Then you can tell me who's acting like a baby. and who isn't."

"I'll start boiling some water." Dean was already retreating backwards.

She bared her teeth at him. "Good call, Winchester."

Fifteen minutes later, Faith stepped out of the shower. She threw on clean clothes and a giant pair of fluffy slippers before leaving the bathroom. Damn that man – he had been right that cleaning herself up did make her feel better. To the Slayer's growing frustration and horror, her periods had once again been getting worse and worse.

The next time Castiel winged his way down from the never-ending fight against Metatron, she fancied she'd ask him to work some of his angel magic and fix whatever was wrong with her lady system. Perhaps she should go see a doctor, but her insurance through the diner wasn't super great, and angel medicine tended to be cheaper than the mortal kind. It wasn't taking the easy way out, she rationalized to herself. Just being thrifty and practical.

She walked downstairs, poured herself a glass of water and a mug of hot chocolate, and downed three ibuprofen from the bottle over the refrigerator, before turning to face the other two inhabitants of the kitchen. A little quicker on the uptake than he had been upstairs, Dean spooned a bowlful of macaroni out for her - Kraft original with bits of half-charred hot dogs mixed in; just the way she liked it – while Peter watched in concern.

"Are you – are you okay?" he said aloud.

"Which of us you asking, kid?"

"Uh . . . I'm not sure who I'm more worried about. You for burning hot dogs or Faith for eating them."

"I want a hysterectomy," Faith announced, scalding the roof of her mouth on the hot chocolate and not caring.

"You said that last month," observed Dean from his post by the stove.

"And I meant it last month."

"A what?" questioned Peter.

"Seriously," Faith mumbled around two bulging cheeks filled with pasta, "do they not teach anatomy at schools these days?"

"Uh." Peter was slowly putting two and two together, and his face flamed hot scarlet. "It's an elective, but you have to have passed AP Bio 2 to take it. I'm not quite there yet."

Dean tugged one of the chairs out from beneath the kitchen table and sat down. "Too bad. I learned a lot of anatomy in school." He lowered his voice suggestively.

Blinking, Peter very carefully said nothing. On the inside, his brain felt like it was exploding, and he itched to whip out his cell phone and capture some of this on video for Ned, whose last five texts had all been a series of variations on "Aaaaaaaaaghhhh!" and rabid jealousy. Faith's next laughing comment did nothing to dull the compulsion to film.

"Baby, I learned all my anatomy outta school."

"Mmm. That because you dropped out." Dean kicked Faith's ankle under the table.

She kicked him back. "So did you, Einstein."

"You – " started Peter.

"GEDs, Pete," answered Dean without waiting for him to complete the question. "That's what all the cool kids do."

"But don't be like us," said Faith forcefully. "Be like Tony Stark."

The hunter nodded. "Except without the being a douche part."

Torn between supporting his mentor and morbid curiosity for where this line of conversation was going, Peter cautiously interjected, "Mister Stark isn't a – "

Faith cut him off. "He's rich, kid. All rich people are douches. They can't help it."

"But Mister Stark – d "

This time it was Dean who interrupted him. "Point is, Peter, you need to go to summer school, pass history, and go to college. And," he leered, "if you do end up taking that elective in anatomy, don't forget rule number one."

Scrambling to remember which of the Slayer and hunter's endless rules came first, the teenager hazarded, "Uh, don't spill food in the Impala?"

"The other rule number one," the man corrected him.

"Don't turn your back on a vampire?"

"The _other_ other number one."

"Uhhhhh?" He was truly lost now.

Chuckling to herself, Faith picked up her bowl of macaroni and headed for the living room. As she went, she called over her shoulder, "Always use a condom!"

Peter turned an unhealthy shade of white, faintly tinged with green. "And I thought the talk with May was bad," he thought to himself, only to realize he'd accidentally said that aloud when Dean started laughing and choked on a bite of hot dog.

Dean coughed furiously and wiped at his eyes. When he recovered, he said, "Oh, that wasn't the talk, Pete. We're having the talk tomorrow. Faith scheduled it somewhere between bitching about her period and taking down that Agaret demon infestation in Cœur d'Alene."

" _Agaret_ demons? What are those?"

Dean shrugged. "Dumb kind of demon. Not the exorcising kind. More like the kind that a mad scientist or the Wicked Witch of the West would use as cannon fodder. Some of 'em look like dogs, some like snakes, some like hyenas or warthogs or something. This kind's more of the alligator type. Plus apparently they do some acid slime thing."

"Acid _slime?_ Peter thought longingly of taking down angry men supported by alien tech. It was so much less . . . icky . . . sounding than _acid slime_. "That's a thing?"

"Yep." The hunter grinned, all teeth and no pity. "So don't forget to pack extra pants."

* * *

**June 25th, 2017, English Point, Coeur d'Alene National Forest, Idaho, 11:30 p.m.**

Peter swung from tree branch to tree branch overhead, supported by slender strands of synthetic fibers, exultant in the freedom of movement that came with his suit and his web shooters. Below him in the darkness, he could make out the pinprick of yellow from Dean's flashlight on the forest floor as he and Faith leaned on one another and mock-limped their way through the trees. In between the creak and rustles of leaves in the wind, the whispers of hunter and Slayer drifted up to him.

"Guess we need to schedule in more forest time for baby Tarzan." Faith was talking.

Dean snorted. "That the best you got?"

"It's better than George of the Jungle . . . though I liked that movie more."

"'Cause you got a thing for Brendan Frazer."

Faith did not deny it, and they continued to carefully follow the tracks that they had first spotted earlier that afternoon while casing the town. Weird tracks plus a few complaints that someone had logged at the local police station about missing livestock and seeing what looked like alligator paw prints on their land, and it hadn't taken too much work to isolate this part of the forest around English Point and Lake Hayden as the most likely hideout for the Agaret demons. In the few hours remaining before twilight, they had separated to check out different farms in search of positive signs of the Agaret demons. The trails had intersected at the origin of their current search, where Faith and Dean had almost collided with one another just as the sun set. Peter had snuck a picture on his cell phone. If Ned was very, very nice and kept his mouth shut about everything, he might even send it to him for Christmas.

Once proper night fell, and the possibility of running into any hikers decreased almost to zero, they drove back out to English Point. Dean eased the Impala into a narrow stand of trees. While Peter had traded his jeans for his suit, the others had each selected a machete out of the trunk. Then they began slowly following the signs of the demons' presence deeper and deeper into the woods. Some times there were clear signs of foot prints, deep, four-toed imprints with short claw-marks just ahead of where each toe pad would land. Other times the marks were more subtle - branches broken aside just so, a hole in a leaf from where a fleck of corrosive drool had landed.

Dangling upside down from the uppermost branch of an old pine, Peter paused to listen to the conversation from down below.

"I don't know why we're both playing bait," complained Dean.

"Because Spider-zan won the rock paper scissors tournament."

"Sneaky spider. You think he was right about us having tells?"

"Dunno. You definitely have a tell, that's for sure."

"So do you."

Peter wondered why they could never keep it straight for longer than ten minutes, why every conversation inevitably ended in joking and flirting. He supposed that perhaps he just didn't get it - yeah, he'd liked Lisa/Lauren an awful lot, but he had never been able to get anywhere past awkward before he really jinxed it up. Plus, there had also been that whole thing with her dad.

Maybe one day he would understand; maybe one day he'd be like Faith and Dean with a girl, although if he was being honest, their dynamic was far more reminiscent of his and Ned's messing around than of any couple he'd ever seen at school - except, of course for the flirting part. He and Ned didn't flirt.

Down below, Faith snickered, "You really think I have a tell?"

"Yeah," Dean had lowered his voice a little, but he was not nearly quiet enough for Peter not to hear him. "You're an open book. I can tell exactly what you're thinking when I -"

A branch crashed down onto the path in front of them, helped along by a little intentional clumsiness on Peter's part.

"What was that for?"

Faith glanced up into the darkness above their heads, but the night was too thick for her to see much. "I think he wants us to focus."

"I am focusing," grumbled Dean. "This is part of my focusing process. You're part of my focusing - "

_CRASH._ A second branch came tumbling down.

"Maybe it's an agropelter," teased Faith.

"Nope, gotta be Spiderman. Agropelters have better aim. Fine, okay, I get it," Dean called up into the trees where he suspected the Spiderteen to be. Peter was proud of the fact that he was at least five trees off. "I'm focused."

"Hey - Dean, take a look at these tracks here."

"Mmm."

Deciding that it might be a good idea to scout ahead for a bit, Peter flung a strand of webbing to the next oak tree and swung out after it. "Hey, Karen?" he asked mid-swing.

"Yes, Peter," replied the calm AI.

"What's an agropelter?"

"I do not contain that term in my internal databases. Allow me a moment to search the Internet."

"Sure, Karen-"

"Ah, yes. An agropelter is an obnoxious creature of American folklore. Roughly the size of a small monkey, it has very long arms and has been known to throw tree limbs down onto the heads of unsuspecting loggers, injuring and often killing them."

"Oh. That's . . . not good."

"No. Montana and Idaho have no history of reported agropelter sightings in the last one hundred and fifty years."

"I guess that's better?"

"Objectively, I would say so."

"Right." "Watch out!"

Dean's half-hoarse shout ended in crash and a thud. Peter immediately twisted himself around and began scrambling back through the trees and branches towards the ever-loudening sounds of a scuffle. In his curiosity about the argopelter and his enjoyment of the night air, he had gotten too far ahead of the others.

Dean's flashlight lay abandoned in the center of a clearing, and the hunter himself was down on his back, holding off a fearsome creature with the point of his machete. The creature, which had to be a Agaret demon, was six-foot-plus standing on its hind legs. Its heavy paws ended in blunt, thick talons, and bright green bioluminescent fluid dripped from between the exposed teeth of its long, crocodile-like jaws.

One drop landed on the top of Dean's head, and the man swore, using words that Peter had never heard before.

To the man's other side, Faith was fending off another three of the monsters. Her machete extended, her teeth bared, the Slayer was snarling low in her throat, the noise almost matching the snapping and snuffling of the demons. These three were down on all fours, but they still came up past her waist.

Peter hesitated for a moment, distracted and fascinated by actually having a chance to see the famous monster hunters in action. He perched on the edge of a tree branch, his toes curling around the thin curve of the bark, and watched.

"Mother-frakker!" howled the Slayer as one of the demons projectile vomited that disturbingly green spit at her, and the right leg of her jeans started smoking. "Dean - little help here."

"Kinda busy myself!"

"Hey, snappy!"

The teenager threw himself into action, launching forward from his tree branch to shoot a thick wad of synthetic spiderweb at the demon that was attempting to herd Dean up against the trunk of a giant cedar.

_Thwup! Thwup! Thwup!_ The initial load of spiderweb hit the demon solidly at its middle, slamming it past the hunter and sticking him to the cedar. It was quickly followed by five more, smaller webs, covering the monster's limbs and face, effectively blinding and neutralizing it.

"Here, puppy, puppy!" hollered Peter, sending more tendrils of synthetic to wrap around the tail of one of the demons menacing Faith and dragging it backwards and away from its fellows. Three additional strands come next in sharp, rapid spurts, spinning round and round the monster's legs and hoisting it up into the trees. "Hey, guys! Look! I made a piñata!"

Flipping upside down, the teenager held onto a length of webbing between his feet while he swung through the clearing. He wrapped his arms around the middle of the third demon and then retracted the webbing, speedily ascending twenty feet into the air before dropping the demon onto its head. Hooting with triumph, he dove back down to the earth for the fourth demon only to find it already headless in a pool of dark, sludgy blood.

During his acrobatics, Faith and Dean had been far from inactive. As soon as the three attacking her had been knocked down to one, Faith darted into towards the monster, stabbing and hacking at its head and sides, dodging the sharp teeth and furious jaws, until she managed to decapitate it. With the other three demons, wherever Peter led, the hunter and Slayer followed, beheading the monsters as soon as the Spiderman managed to imprison or incapacitate them.

"Oh . . . that's gross," Peter mumbled inside his cowl, where no one but Karen could hear him.

"Equal parts sulfuric acid, saltpeter, and cadaverin," Karen informed him unhelpfully.

"We'd better hurry back to the car," Dean announced once Peter was standing on the forest dirt. He nodded towards Faith's jeans, which were still smoking. "Before that gets down to the skin."

"You mean I can't run around naked?" joked the Slayer.

"Not with high schoolers around."

Peter began, "Does one of us need to wait - "

"No," Faith said flatly. "We can leave the bodies. They're thoroughly dead."

"Right." Peter took a few quick steps into the cover of the trees, where he gulped down huge lungfuls of cleaner air. Nothing - absolutely nothing - had ever assaulted his nose and his senses with the foul violence of Agaret demon gunk.

"Breathe," Dean reminded him, and he patted the teen on the back with the non-machete-carrying hand. "Still got three miles to the car."

"Yeah . . . how about I meet you there?" Peter sent a stream of webbing up into the trees and disappeared into the darkness above them, branches creaking and snapping as he raced off.

"He better not give himself a concussion," said Dean, but he sounded more affectionate than worried.

"Hey, at least I can take my shirt off now . . . "

"I can still hear you!" came the shrill complaint from fifty yards ahead of them.

"That super-hearing thing . . ." grumbled Faith, but she still tugged her shirt up and over her head and folded it up into a ball, so that the blood- and acid-stained sleeves were on the inside.

Dean continued pushing on through the dark forest ahead of her. "Yep." He called back to her, "Come on, Smokey. We ain't gonna get there if we don't start moving faster."

Drenched in slime, they squelched their way in companionable silence from the cave back to the Chevy where Peter was waiting for them, sitting cross-legged on the trunk of the car. Without stopping to say hello, Faith and Dean hurried to strip down to their underwear. Although the acidic gunk could not penetrate the fine mesh of synthetic fibers in Peter's suit, it had completely eaten through the wide leg of Faith's boot-cut jeans, and suspicious smoke was emanating from the left shoulder of Dean's shirt. Peter closed his eyes when the Slayer reached for the hem of her tank top and did not reopen them until Dean laughed out the all-clear.

Faith shoved the piles of ruined clothing into a large black trash bag and then double- and triple-bagged it before dumping the bag into the trunk. After Dean had exchanged his machete for an axe, the three returned to the woods, this time with two cans of lighter fluid and two shovels. Once again, Peter took the highway route overhead.

When they reached the Agaret demons' nest, Dean set up an electric lantern and Faith and Peter began digging in the soft earth at the mouth of the cave. Their light source secured, the hunter started to dismember the four bodies - limbs, torsos, hips, and heads. The reek was acrid and noxious. Peter took a quick step backwards, half-stumbling over the six inch lip of the grave, but Dean only grunted and kept working.

The butchery and the grave-digging finished around roughly the same time, and together the three hauled the Agaret demons' remains to the pit and tossed them in. Dean tugged off his new over-shirt, which had gotten horribly stained by demon blood, wadded it up, and threw it in after.

He poured both cans of lighter fluid on top of the remains, and then Faith lit a handful of matches in one strike and dropped them into the wet maw of the grave. The stench of burning Agaret demon was even worse than spilled Agaret demon blood, and Peter's eyes watered.

"Oh, God," he choked out.

"You don't like bonfires?" joked Dean, who to the teenager's horror was edging closer to the fire and actually smiling at the dancing flames, holding his hands out toward the heat.

"Oh - oh - oh, God," Peter repeated before diving to the side. He jerked off his cowl to expel lunch, dinner, and his pre-Slaying snack onto the ground.

"Gross, dude," observed Faith.

"How can you stand that?" he gasped.

Dean answered him with a shrug and a casual, "It ain't the worst thing I've smelled."

"Faith?"

"What he said. You ever been near a women's prison toilet that's been clogged for a week? That's worse than this."

"You were in _prison_?"

The Slayer lifted one shoulder in an easy shrug. "Only once."

"Only once?" echoed the teenager, unsure if he had heard her correctly.

"Also once for me," mused Dean. "If we're counting prison and not jail."

"You two - " Peter exhaled, nervous and nauseous and grateful, grateful, grateful that they were on his side. Or that he was on theirs. It was all very confusing. The burning in his nose was short-circuiting his brain. "You two are terrifying."

"Mmm," grunted Dean, but he sounded pleased.

"So, uh, what do we do now?"

Faith shrugged. "It depends. I used to smoke. Now I mostly check my email." As if on cue, she pulled her cell phone out of her back pocket and began thumbing through her g-mail.

"You, Dean? What did you and Sam do?"

"Sam likes to talk about his feelings - no, hold that. Sam likes to interrogate me about _my_ feelings," Dean groused.

"He have any luck?" teased Faith lightly, putting her phone away again.

The hunter dug his elbow into her ribs. "What, like you don't enjoy doing the same thing?"

"Only when I have to," said Faith.

"Uh, guys?" Peter coughed.

"What?" asked Dean.

"Sirens."

"Like the kind that made Sam be a sh-tty brother?" mumbled Faith in an undertone.

"Hey!" the man protested.

Peter was definitely going to have to call Ned in the morning and ask if he remembered anything about sirens from the Carver Eglund. In the meantime, however, they had bigger fish to fry. "No," he said, louder and sharper. "The kind that means a fire truck."

Frowning, Dean said, "I don't hear anything."

The teenager pointed to the side of his head, where his ears were covered by the cowl. "Super senses, guys. Remember?"

"Right." He kicked dirt into the smoldering grave. "Damn damp bones. They always smoke more than -"

"Less talk," commanded Faith, tugging at Dean's arm and shoving his axe back into his hands. "More run!"

As soon as they got back to the Impala, Dean hopped behind the wheel and shifted the car into neutral while Faith tossed the shovels and axe into the trunk. After a soft count from one to three, Peter and Faith began pushing the car out of the stand of trees in which it was hidden and along the gravel access road until the reached the blacktop. The teenager changed out of his Spiderman suit into his street clothes, then curled up on the backseat, Dean's folded jacket pinned beneath his head while they raced back to Coeur d'Alene and the main highway back to Missoula.

It was now far past three in the morning, and Peter drifted off to the faint strains of Cat Stevens mourning about his lady D'Arbanville. He woke to the beginnings of sunlight, a barking dog, and Dean dragging him out of the Chevy and slinging him up and over his shoulder in a fireman's carry.

"Mmmphg," complained the boy .

"Don't worry," said Dean, his voice quiet and smooth, almost soothing. "I talked to Sam, told him you'd miss class. You can keep sleeping."

"You calling in sick?" came Faith's voice from somewhere to the left of Peter's dangling head.

"Nah." They began walking towards the front door of the house. "I'll just sleep for a few hours, go in at ten. You?"

"I got a shift at noon. You know, that spider web stuff -"

"Cool, huh?"

Faith yawned. "Yeah. Almost makes it too easy, though."

"Only you," snorted the hunter.

"What?"

"Only you would be complaining about Agaret demons being too easy. You don't hear me pitching a fit when an exorcism works the first time."

She yawned again. "That's because they never work the first time."

"Whose side are you on?" demanded Dean, half-amused, half-offended.

"Sam's."

"Feckless woman."

" _Feckless_? Someone's been reading."

"I read."

"Vonnegut doesn't count."

"Says the chick who's reading Harry Potter for the third time."

"Hey. That's so I can talk to your sister-in-law about something besides work, Olivia's current runny nose, and why you and I don't get married."

Dean stumbled on the stairs to the second floor and almost dropped Peter. "What?"

"She thinks we're perfect for each other."

"What did you say?"

"Shh. You'll wake the kid."

Peter lifted his head from where it was resting against Dean's back just long enough to mumble, "'M awake. An' I wanna know, too. What did you say?"

"That Dean hadn't asked me."

For a second time, the hunter almost tripped over his own feet. "You _want_ me to ask you?"

Faith patted him on the shoulder. "Hell no. Don't get me wrong, you're a good shot and easy on the eyes, but I ain't the marrying type."

"You should," murmured Peter.

"Excuse me?" coughed the Slayer.

"You'd have cute kids." Peter felt himself tumbling down onto a bed, and a quick tugging to remove his shoes before a blanket was pulled over him, and the warm weight of Reggie settled by his left hip. He was too lazy to open his eyes, just yawned and rolled over onto his side.

"I ain't never, ever having kids," insisted Faith. "Now go to sleep, Spiderboy. You're delirious."

"He's not completely out of it. They would be cute," Dean observed.

The Slayer replied, "Sure thing, dumbass. Cute as buttons until Heaven decides they had a destiny or some demon manages to bust loose through a back door out of Hell and comes lookin' for payback and decides that a part-Slayer, part-Winchester kid'd make just the thing."

Dean could not argue with that. "Mmm," he said, and then the door closed with a gentle thud, and Peter was lost in a deep, dreamless sleep.


	9. When a Stranger Calls

**A/N:** The story continues! And now we're heading towards the back half of the fic, and the plot kicks itself into a higher gear.

* * *

As the summer progressed, life in Montana settled into a functional rhythm. On days he had class, Peter caught a ride to campus with Faith, Dean, or Sam according to their schedules. In between lectures and while waiting for a ride home, he worked on assignments, studied, StarkFaced Ned, and reviewed the Montana and New York driving instruction manuals. Dean had been more than a little emphatic about him taking the real test when he got back to Queens, as he considered it a sacred rite of passage. He encouraged the sixteen-year-old to drive as much as possible, and Peter slowly became adept at maneuvering around semis and soccer moms as he clocked in hour after hour behind the wheel of the Chevy or Faith's Honda or Sam's truck.

If Peter didn't have class, he read or did homework, took Reggie on long runs, watched far too many Law & Order reruns, and stalked Missoula crime reports. Preparing to fight monsters was all well and good, but he missed the challenge of a good old-fashioned robbery. And more than a little bit, he longed for the autonomy of living in New York. Montana was not exactly pedestrian or spider friendly, and Peter was starting to feel just the tiniest bit homesick.

On the days when Faith or Dean didn't have to work, however, Peter was far too busy to miss Queens. There was simply too much to do: sandwiches and swimming by the lake; long drives to Yellowstone or the Tetons; and Dean's never-ending quest to find a favorite 24-hour diner. For the Fourth of July weekend, they abandoned all training and went on a three state-wide expedition to find the best donuts in the Pacific Northwest

Rarely, they received a call from one of Faith's Slaying contacts or an old hunter friend of Dean's called in a favor, and it would be time for quick overnight trip to gank whatever sonnuvagun was chomping down on people. Peter's nightmares about being trapped beneath rubble and the Vulture's laughing face instead became increasingly filled with more and more monsters and ghosts. To be honest, e did not understand how the Slayer and the hunter could simply wade into the blood and gore and horror of all those destroyed human lives without blinking an eye.

Sure, sometimes Faith disappeared for late-night runs, and Dean punched walls, and they both drank far more than Peter would have thought a human liver could endure, but they survived. But otherwise, they snarked at one another, let the dog sleep wherever it wanted to, and always made sure that Peter ate breakfast and went to class.

In some ways, the teenager reflected, he had less freedom than he had had with Aunt May. By no means had she been an absent aunt, but one of May was nowhere near the equivalent of a Slayer and a hunter with a history of troubled adolescence and Guinness Book of World Records levels of cynicism and suspicion. It wasn't so much that they got prudish about what he did, but they liked to know. Or, as Dean explained it, "We're paranoid bastards, and we have to know everything."

On the subject of paranoia, Faith continued to be peeved and twitchy about the vamp that had gotten away at the beginning of the summer, snapping so much at Dean's good-natured ribbing on the subject that the hunter had given up on teasing her about it. And that, Peter concluded, was saying something, given how nothing else ever seemed to be off limits between the two of them. They were, as Sam had once put it, the same person with one different chromosome and slightly different eyes. Also mildly different tastes in music, as attested by the occasional debates over radio control. Peter had learned the hard way that attempting to change the station or tape while Dean was in the car was a foolish, fruitless pursuit, regardless of whomever was driving.

Still, after he helped take out the Agaret demons, everything seemed to change for the more relaxed. Loudly impressed with his acrobatics, Faith and Dean cut down on the amount of hand to hand. Instead, Dean took on a project from his boss to help clear out an old gas station and warehouse that the man planned on turning into a second repair shop. In the evenings, Peter and Dean took endless delight in creating obstacle course after obstacle course and timing the Spiderteen.

Once or twice, videos of the more impressive runs found their way online. When asked about it by Mr. Stark, Dean flatly denied having had anything to do with uploading the clips. He was such a good liar, in fact, that Peter, who had hovered over his shoulder suggesting possible YouTube titles, almost believed Dean's vehement denials himself.

In retaliation, Tony addressed his next shipment of upgraded liquid web material to Pickle Parkour, care of Dorkbat Windsorknot. Faith laughed so hard when the package arrived that mascara ran all the way down her cheeks and she developed a stomachache.

Besides the updates and upgrades to Peter's training, the hunter and Slayer also ceased censoring themselves quite as much around him. Not that they had ever been much good at the censoring, but now they stopped trying completely. Topics of morning, afternoon, and evening conversation ranged from the inane - just how many weird iterations of mac and cheese did Dean know how to make? - to the historical - how the occult had actually altered the course of Western civilization on multiple occasions, and while the Illuminati were, as Dean put it, "bogus," the idea behind them wasn't too far removed from reality - to the mortifying.

"The only rule about sex," started Faith late one Saturday morning as a jingle for an adult store ("Where fun and fantasy meet!") played on the radio after they left the local Missoula paintball range, starving and bruised and so covered in paint that Dean had gloated three times already about his brilliance in having insisted that they take Faith's car.

"Could we not?" asked Peter. Six weeks' familiarity, combined with having shot the Slayer with exploding balls of acrylic paint seven times in one three-minute span, had left him emboldened.

"No." Faith turned down the radio, ignoring Dean's grumble of protest as the strains of Night Ranger came to an abrupt halt. "This is important - if you only ever learn and remember one thing about sex, this needs to be it."

"Besides the condom thing?" joked the teenager feebly.

"Besides the condom thing."

"Lay it on me, sensei," Peter exhaled, resigned to his fate.

"Whatever you do - whether it's kissing or vanilla or freaky as hell - don't do it unless you want to and you're gonna enjoy doing whatever it is. And don't do anything unless the other person -"

"Or people," interjected Dean.

Faith rolled her eyes. "Or other people - unless they like it and want to do it, too. You got that, kid?"

Peter gave her a thumbs up. "Got it."

"Dunno why you had to be so dramatic," complained Dean, fiddling with the radio and turning the music back up. "You could've just said that consent is more mandatory than condoms."

"I was _trying_ to be inspirational."

"Missed that by a mile."

"Hey - the radio brought it up!"

And in classic Missoula style, the bickering continued back and forth across the front seat all the way home.

* * *

**August 4th, 2017, Missoula, Montana, 6:45 p.m.**

Dean waited until after dinner to call his little brother and give him a piece of his mind. It had been his night to cook, so he sat at the kitchen table, phone pressed to his ear, while Peter and Faith washed dishes and put away the remnants of the Swedish meatballs and egg noodles. "Hey," he said quickly as soon as someone picked up on the other end of the line.

"Yeah, Dean?" Sam's voice was a little muffled in that particular way which meant he was holding the phone between his shoulder and his chin.

The hunter barreled onwards. "You gave the kid a B-plus?" he demanded.

Sam sighed, the patented Samuel Winchester sigh for 'I should have known this was coming.' "Dean," he explained defensively, "he did B-plus work."

"Oh, did he?" growled Dean. Over by the sink, Peter's shoulders were hunching in obvious discomfort. Dean noticed but did nothing. He had a Sam to scold first.

"Maybe if he spent fewer evenings doing teenage superhero crossfit and more evenings studying, he would have written the A-paper I know he's capable of," said Sam waspishly.

That was a stupid explanation, and his brother ought to know better. Dean couldn't believe he was actually having to explain this. He snapped, "If he spends less evenings working on his superhero stuff, one day he could get killed."

Halfway through drying a saucepan, Peter flinched. Faith patted him on the shoulder, took the saucepan from his hands, and frowned at Dean.

"Dude, relax," replied Sam in the tone that always implied it was time to talk down his crazy brother. Dean bristled instinctively.

Sam went on, "Look, we've both seen the videos of that ferry in New York. The kid's strong enough to hold that ferry together for more than thirty seconds - I bet he could lift an elephant if he tried. Plus, he's been running circles around you and your super speedy Slayer for weeks now. And anyways, Dean, it's 'fewer' evenings, not 'less.'"

"What?" the hunter barked.

"Fewer," Sam continued his teaching moment. "You can count them, so it's 'fewer.' You only use 'less' for things you can't count - like flour. If you have fewer cows, you have less milk. You know, things like that."

"Sam, where are you right now?" asked Dean casually.

Sam sounded confused. "Home. I'm about to give Livvy a bath. Why?"

"Stay right there," growled Dean through gritted teeth. "I'm coming over to kick your ass."

* * *

**August 8th, 2017, Missoula, Montana, 8:00 p.m.**

Tuesday night rolled around, and Sam and Dean had disappeared. Where to, Peter wasn't exactly sure. When he asked Faith, she had grunted something about a guy called Charlie who had a habit of finding trouble and needing a Winchester bailout.

"So I take it you're not a fan?" he asked over takeout chef salad from the diner, Faith's half-baked attempt at getting him to eat more vegetables.

Frowning, the Slayer paused a moment to consider how she wanted to handle this. Faith gnawed on her bottom lip, a habit that she considered unobtrusive but that Peter was proud of himself for noticing.

At length, she shoved another forkful of romaine and Italian dressing into her mouth, swallowed, and said briskly, "I don't like amateurs going it on their own. You wanna be in this business, you better pair up with someone who knows their shit and learn as much as they'll teach you - and more. Alone and ignorant just gets people killed. Puts 'em in even more danger because they trust you and your godawful stupidity."

"I'm guessing you think Charlie's a . . .?" Peter hazarded.

Faith snorted. "Total amateur. I don't know if she's full of herself or what exactly, but the damn girl keeps getting in over her head, and then it's Dean and Sam who've got to rescue her."

For the first time, the pronouns registered with Peter. "Wait - Charlie's a _damsel_ in distress?"

"Who ought to have more sense," grumbled Faith.

The teenager attempted to harness his increasing knowledge of the Slayer and her Winchester-related escapades to inquire, "What about - what about all those times that you and Dean help each other out of trouble? Or Dean and Sam?" More than a little concerned about what her opinion of him might be, he continued, "Or, uh, Mr. Stark and me? Do you think I'm, uh, like that?"

Faith looked up from her styrofoam dinner container and caught sight of the teenager's crestfallen face. She sighed. "'Course not, Pete. You've - look, kid. You've taught yourself so much out in Queens, and you're picking up whatever knowledge I've got or Dean's got or Stark's got that you think is useful."

She wiped her mouth with a napkin and exhaled. "Peter, you're a _superhero_. Just 'cause I don't keel over and faint when you put on the suit like Dean does doesn't mean that I don't recognize that."

The Slayer smiled at him, and Peter smiled back. Because Faith tended towards the sarcastic and reserved, praise from her really meant something.

"And - I don't know," she said uncomfortably, answering his first question. "I think it's different, because Dean and me, Sam and Dean, hell, even Sam and me, - you said as much yourself - we help each other. It's a two-way kind of thing. Charlie just seems to take help without giving it back. And sometimes, I'm not sure how good of a idea that is. Those boys ain't twenty anymore."

"By this point in the summer, Peter had worked his way through the Slayer's entire collection of Battlestar Galactica DVD's, so he knew exactly how to phrase his next question. "You want to be there at Dean's six?"

Faith shrugged. "He's all I got." At the boy's raised eyebrows and scrunched expression, she went on, "I mean, yeah, there's other people. I have friends," she added, almost defensively.

"But when it comes down to it, Dean's your number one." Peter struggled not to allow his inner excitement escape. They were close - so close to a declaration.

But the moment passed as quickly as it had arrived, living and dying in the same, single instant.

"Nah," the Slayer scoffed, her brown eyes growing closed off. "I just can't afford the mortgage and the dog if he gets turned into monster chow.

"Right," She rose from the table. "I've got a jones for some old-school Slayer-style patrolling. Wanna come along? Long as you stick to the mausoleums and the trees and keep out of sight, you can wear the suit."

"I'm in," Peter said hurriedly before another moment passed him by.

"Okay. Finish your salad and get changed. I'll be in the library when you're ready."

Something - maybe this situation with Charlie - had the Slayer in an odder mood than usual, because not only did she tell Peter to wear his "Spider-Suit" under his jeans and t-shirt, she also took the motorcycle to the first stop on their tour, Missoula's St. Mary's Cemetery. It was Peter's first trip on the bike, and from the way that Faith jerked to a stop and then to a start at every intersection, he had a sinking feeling that if he hadn't been holding on tightly, both arms locked around her stomach, he could have fallen off into the dust, and she wouldn't even have noticed.

"Trees," said Faith gruffly, once they'd arrived at the cemetery and parked the motorcycle unobtrusively a street away. She pointed up to the oaks overhead. "You remember that kids' game, where the floor's lava? Well, this is just like that. I don't want to see you on the ground until it's time to go home."

Aware that he was risking even greater distemper, Peter probed, "Are you - are you feeling okay?"

The Slayer bared her teeth into a grin and said, "I'm feeling in need of a fight."

"I could fight you," offered the teenager, pulling his cowl over his head. "I mean, we could spar and stuff."

"Thanks for the offer, but that's not a great idea."

"Why not?"

Faith's grin transformed from grim to feral. "Because the kind of fight that I'm looking for isn't the kind where people stay friends afterwards - or stay alive," she added in an undertone to herself, and chuckled. "G-d, I wish this town had a demon bar."

"Demons have _bars_?"

"Funny enough, that's almost exactly what Dean said when I took him to one. It's a place where my kind of demons go - not the black smoke monsters that possess people that most hunters deal with. That kind go to regular bars."

"Oh." He digested this information and decided that bars were fast losing whatever appeal they might have held for him. Aunt May would be thrilled - as would Mister Stark, like as not.

"You ever get tired of being so excited by stuff?"

"No," said Peter honestly, ignoring the implied criticism.

Faith shook her head and jerked her thumb upwards. "Enough chit chat. Trees, now."

Peter ascended, climbing up until the thin branches would no longer bear his weight. He followed the dim figure of the Slayer as she tramped angrily across the cemetery's graveled paths. The silver chain of her cross necklace glinted in the twilight, and the rhythmic thump of her boots filled the emptiness of the cemetery more than Peter would have imagined possible.

After three minutes and crossing half the length of the cemetery, he asked, "Karen, can you do a search for the name 'Charlie' in conjunction with the Winchesters?"

"Public records or personal communications?" clarified the AI in his suit pleasantly.

"You can do personal communications?" he wondered, surprised.

"That is not part of my programming, but FRIDAY likely could do it, if it was urgent."

Communicating with FRIDAY would mean getting Mister Stark involved, and Peter felt a little squeamish about his mentor learning of his prurient curiosity. He course-corrected quickly, "Oh, uh, if you could search the Carver Edlund books, that'd be plenty, thanks. I just wanted to see if Charlie's like Dean's ex-girlfriend or something," mumbled Peter.

"Do you need that information?" asked Karen, her nonjudgemental tones somehow making the question seem even more judgmental.

"No," Peter hurried to explain. "I just - I was just curious. Tonight seems weird, even for Faith."

At that exact moment, the Slayer barked up at him, "Kid, I can see you not moving. Keep up, or maybe the trees'll need to be lava, too!"

* * *

After St. Mary's, they piled back onto the bike for a trip to the Catholic Cemetery. It was all nice and quiet until they reached the northwestern quadrant of the cemetery. There, pinned to the wrought-iron fence just inside where the kissing gate entered near the children's section of graves, was a girl - maybe late teens, early twenties - her head thrown back against the fence as a dark figure pressed itself against her, its head bent to her neck.

"Hey, dumbass, let her go," yelled Faith, catapulting forwards from a standstill to a dead run in the space of half a breath.

The figure retreated backwards with a hissed, "Slayer," and the girl dropped onto her knees, lifting a fluttering hand to the ragged pair of holes in her neck.

_Thwup_! From his position in the trees above, Peter shot a wad of webbing at the vampire. It struck him solidly in the face, but he scraped it off and continued sprinting away as quickly as he could.

Not quickly enough. Faith tackled the vampire in a running leap, bringing him down onto the cemetery path with a resounding crash. There was a second of grunting, profanity-ridden struggle, and then the vampire disintegrated into a neat carpet of dust overlying the gravel.

Before Peter could finish closing his mouth and reach the ground, the Slayer had returned to the vampire's victim. She took one look at the Spiderteen, descending from the cover of trees via a razor-thin strand of webbing and jerked her chin at him impatiently. Her palm was pressed flat against the freely bleeding wounds above the girl's right collarbone.

"Shirt," Faith demanded tersely.

"What?"

"That shirt you've got on under the suit. Give it here."

"We could use webbing instead," suggested Peter quietly.

"Not if we're gonna call the cops. Shirt. Now."

That was a tone that clearly said orders needed to be followed. Peter yanked the zipper down on his suit and then tugged his University of Montana calculus club t-shirt up and over his head. He handed it to Faith, who had sat stiffly down on the grass and pulled the injured girl into her arms.

Faith traded her palm for the t-shirt, quickly folding it into a small square and applying increased pressure to the bite marks. Then, with her free hand, she felt for the pulse at the girl's wrist.

"Peter." She wrestled her cell phone out of her pocket and tossed it at him. "Call 9-1-1."

"What do I sa-"

"Just dial and hold it up for me."

He dialed.

Faith's tone went instantly from businesslike to panicked as soon as the operator answered the call. "Hello? Hello? Hi, my friend got bit by a feral dog. I think she's lost a lot of blood. We need an ambulance. We're near the northeastern gate of the Catholic Cemetery."

The operator asked them to hang tight, because help was on the way.

After Peter hung up the phone, the Slayer turned her attention to the girl in her lap. "Hey," said Faith, all the harsh urgency gone from her voice. "Hey, look at me. Come on, look at me, sweetheart."

The girl opened her eyes feebly.

"There you go," the Slayer encouraged her. "What's your name?"

"A-Amanda," whispered the girl faintly.

"Okay, Amanda. You're doing great. Just great. We're going to get you to the hospital, okay, honey? Just hang in there for me."

She gave Peter a significant look and said quietly, "Kid, you either need to change or to get out of here. We don't need a vid of you here popping up on the Internet."

Peter retreated back into the safety of the trees while Faith held the girl - Amanda - in her arms, keeping up a running litany of pleasant nonsense and questions until the ambulance arrived. As she assisted the paramedics in loading Amanda onto a stretcher, Peter struggled mightily not to jostle the branches of the fir tree he was perched in too much.

The paramedics asked for her names, and to Peter's lack of surprise, Faith gave a fake one. "Cordelia Chase," she said, with an odd quirk of her lips.

"Wait," begged Amanda as the EMT made to shut the ambulance doors. "There's . . I . . ."

"Yes?" enquired Faith gently. She bent over the girl, who whispered something in her ear. Even with his enhanced hearing, Peter could not make out what it was, but it couldn't have been good, for when the Slayer straightened, her expression was cold and wooden.

"Take good care of her," she said to the paramedics, and then she set out through the cemetery the way she had come, away from the flashing lights and rumbling engine of the ambulance. She was almost at the main gate when Peter dropped down to join her, landing in an easy crouch and then tagging along at her heels as she hurried back to the motorcycle.

Walking through the gate, Faith remarked, "Sorry about your shirt, kid, but we got bigger problems."

"Huh?"

The Slayer opened the saddlebags on her Harley and explained,"That girl - that vampire - that, Spiderchild, was a calling card."

She waited patiently for Peter for finished pulling his sweatpants and hoodie over his suit before handing him a helmet and continuing, "Missoula isn't vamp territory. Hasn't been since I cleared the place out when I moved here. Sometimes you get a poltergeist or a half-demon passing through, but not vampires. This was a message. Somebody knows I'm here and decided to send me a visitor . . . dammit." She chewed on her lip again, not even attempting to be subtle this time.

"Come on, kid." Faith swung her leg over the seat of her bike and gestured for him to get on. "We gotta go. I need to talk to Buffy."

"Not Dean?" asked the teenager, surprised.

"No." The woman shook her head. "This is Slayer stuff. Don't worry. I'll tell him eventually. Just not until after I talk to B."

* * *

**August 18th, 2017, Missoula, Montana, 5:27 p.m.**

"Caroline called me at work today," Dean announced as soon as Faith walked in the door, just having returned from picking Peter up from the college.

The Slayer kicked off her tennis shoes in the entryway and walked into the living room. Reggie hopped down from the couch and bounded over to her. She petted him obligingly. "Oh?"

"She wants us to go out tonight."

"Huh?" Faith frowned, and her hand froze between the German Shepherd's ears.

"You, me, her, Sammy."

"What about Olivia?" asked the woman. At Reggie's insistent whine, she commenced petting him again.

"She was wondering if Peter wouldn't mind babysitting while we grab burgers and a movie."

"I'll do it!" The teenager stuck his head in from the kitchen. His hands were already filled with a half-open box of Wheat Thins. In Peter's mind, pre-dinner snack time was definitely something to be taken seriously. "You should totally go!" he enthused. "Have fun! Don't do anything I wouldn't do."

Faith raised her eyebrows. "You ever watch a toddler before, kid?"

"No, but I saved my academic decathlon team from a broken elevator in the Washington monument. I can probably handle a baby."

"Famous last words," taunted the Slayer, but she was grinning.

Interpreting the grin as acquiescence, Dean nodded. "Okay, I'll call Caro back and tell her we're in. Word of advice, Peter."

"Yeah?" came the garbled response, the teenager's cheeks bulging with half-chewed crackers.

"Bedtime is sacred, and don't give Livvy sugar. You manage those two things, and you may survive the night."

* * *

**8:15 p.m.**

"I - I still can't believe you get to be there!" Ned enthused, irrepressible as always. "What are they like? What is _he_ like? And what's Sam like?"

Peter glanced around the room nervously. Sam and Caroline hadn't said anything about a nanny-cam or other video baby monitor when Faith and Dean had dropped him off, and they'd handed the thirteen-month-old little girl to him. Thankfully, Olivia had been sleeping for the last thirty minutes, so he felt safe enough to answer honestly. "Bossy, mostly."

"Even _Sam_?"

" _Especially_ Sam."

"And Faith? And Dean?" Ned sighed like a preteen girl and said, "They're - he's - they're perfect for each other."

Peter grinned. He was glad that he wasn't the only one who saw it. "That's what I keep telling you. Anyway, it's been pretty quiet out here. Oh - we did see a vampire the other day."

"What happened? Tell me everything," demanded Ned excitedly.

"I helped Faith rescue this girl it was attacking, and she staked it. It was kinda - okay, it was really, _really_ dusty. How's home?"

"Boring. Same. The usual. Like always," said Ned in a rush. "The only thing is that MJ asked about you - she and Flash aren't buying the whole Tony Stark summer camp for teenage geniuses bit."

"I think it's more of me as the kid genius that they don't buy, Ned," countered Peter dryly.

"Probably. I was trying to be polite. Guy in the chair, always polite."

"Except for when you're telling teachers that you're watching porn in the library during homecoming."

"Yeah, except for then.. . What was that?"

"Uh, sounded like the door. Hang on - there's someone here. I"ll call you back."

"Cool. I'm just working on homework for tomorrow. Nothing interesting going on chez me. Call back whenever."

"Will do."

Peter approached the front door and flicked on the porch light. He opened the door to a tall, thin woman wearing a pair of knee-high heeled black boots beneath a flowing gray dress and a red coat that skimmed all the way down to her hips. Framed by a curtain of long, dark hair, her angular face was milk pale.

"Hello," she said calmly, her voice low and soothing. "I've had some trouble with my car." She gestured to a small sedan parked in the road two houses further down the street, it's emergency lights blinking rapidly. Smoke was emanating from underneath the hood. "I've tried a few doors, but no one else is home. Would you mind if I stepped in and used your phone?"

The hair on the backs of Peter's arms stood on end. "Uh." While the request itself sounded entirely reasonable, something about this woman and her wide, intensely attentive eyes make his skin crawl and his stomach churn. "Uh, I think there's a fire sub station two blocks from here," he lied, stepping backwards into the house. "You should ask them."

Before he could completely clear the threshold, the woman's hand shout out to close, cold and hard, around his wrist. She tugged, pulling him back out onto the porch. Peter tried to jerk his hand back, but she continued to tug. Her other hand reached up and pulled at his shoulder, turning him to face her.

"Invite me in," purred the woman in a voice that had become entirely different altogether - a susurration that bypassed suggestion and went straight to command.

Gazing into the woman's eyes, Peter felt his head go light and fuzzy and warm. How silly of him to forget his manners. Aunt May would be so, so disappointed in him.

"Of course," said the teenager. "Please, come in."

The woman smiled.


	10. My Achy Breaky Heart

**I’m A/N:** Happy Holidays and Merry early Christmas!

* * *

**August 18th, 2017, 7:50 p.m.**

From the moment that the group of four adults arrived at the restaurant, Faith deeply regretted having had a late-afternoon snack before she left the diner. There was maybe half a centimeter of space left in her stomach, but still she struggled her way through the salad and then a large serving of manicotti, not even bothering to bat Dean's fork away when it darted in to sneak a bite.

It was blatantly clear to her that going for Italian had been Caroline's idea. The red-headed physical therapist was having a splendid time, sipping at her white wine, nibbling on shrimp scampi, and attempting to play footsie with her husband under the table. She was not abashed even when it took multiple tries before she reached the ankle at the end of Sam's daddy long legs, and along the way she managed to kick Dean in the knee cap and caress the side of Faith's calf with the sole of her foot.

All things considered, the Slayer felt zero surprise at the end of the meal when the married couple begged off from going to see a movie - they were thinking of making other plans, giggled Caroline, wrapped around her husband's arm.

Dean nodded knowingly and gave his little brother a wink and a thumb's up as soon as Caroline had closed the car door behind her. Despite his exaggerated eye roll at his brother's antics, Sam could not keep from grinning.

"Lovebirds," drawled Faith when the red pick-up truck began to pull away.

"Makes me sick," snorted Dean, but his eyes were amused.

"Good thing we took two cars, though," the woman commented, beginning to make her way through the line of parked automobiles to the Chevy.

"Yeah." Dean glanced at the Slayer, and he weighed the possible options from here in his mind. "So, uh, you want to -"

"Go see a horror flick and make out in the back of the theater?"

"And then - "

"Make fun of the crappy jump scares?"

"G-d, you know, Sam's totally wrong."

Confused, Faith paused in between the passenger door of a minivan and the driver's side mirror of a Subaru hatchback. "Huh?"

"Caroline isn't the perfect woman; you are."

Batting her eyes obnoxiously, the Slayer observed, "Careful there, tiger. You keep sayin' romantic stuff like that, and I might just go getting a crush on you."

"Whoa." Dean held up his hands to fend her off. "Boundaries, Slayer girl. This is a professional relationship."

" _Very_ professional," said Faith, and walking towards the Impala, she slapped him on the ass.

* * *

**10:03 p.m.**

Two hours and one solidly C+ to B- horror film later, the hunter and Slayer exited the auditorium, popcorn kernels stuck in their teeth, the backs of their hands brushing against each other every few steps until Dean finally huffed in irritation and grabbed Faith's hand in his.

She promptly pulled away, complaining, "The gore looked fake."

"You always say that," he reminded her, not in the least bit offended by the rejection.

"Well, that's because it always does." Lowering her voice, Faith nodded towards a sign outside one of the other auditorium doors for _The Hitman's Bodyguard,_ which was due to start in ten minutes. "Another one?"

Dean shrugged. "Sure, why not?" His phone buzzed in his pocket. "Hang on." Frowning, he scrolled through his unread messages. "Got a text from Sam. Looks like it's time to go back to the house."

Reluctantly, the Slayer walked away from the halls and halls of movies that she could sneak into for free now that she'd actually paid for the first movie and made it past the pimply teenager at the ticket checkpoint. "Can we not go in?" she half-grumbled, half-whined as they stepped out into the warm August night. "Just make the kid come out to the curb?"

Unclear on why it mattered, the man replied, "I guess so. Why?"

"Because I've seen your brother's 'I just got laid' smirk once, and I'd rather never see it ever again. If it's all the same to you."

Ah. Now that was a feeling that Dean could empathize with. "Fine by me."

Faith waited until they reached the Chevy to drop her next quasi-complaint. "You realize the kid's gotta go home soon," she said quietly.

The hunter twisted the car key in the lock. "Yeah." He glanced down at a crumpled paper soda cup on the ground and then met her eyes over the roof of the car. "What do we got left, two weeks?"

"I think so." After getting into the car and buckling her seatbelt, the woman ran a hand through her hair and finger-combed it up into a ponytail, which she secured with an elastic from around her wrist. She fanned the air in front of her face. "Get the AC going, would you?

He fiddled with the knob for the air conditioner, and soon air began blowing through the front seat, hot and stifling. "It'll take a minute to cool down," he half-apologized.

"Thanks."

"Two weeks, huh?"

"Yep."

"So, Vegas next weekend?" the hunter suggested as he shifted into reverse and backed out of his parking spot.

"Dean, he's sixteen."

"Exactly!" said Dean, grinning "Which is why I'll say it again. Vegas next weekend!"

Still fanning herself with her hand, Faith blew a puff of air out through pursed lips. "You're impossible."

His grin widened. "That's not what you were saying in the back of the theater earlier when I was - "

"Dean, for the love of G-d, if you don't shut up, I'm going to punch you in the face - and I'm not going to wait for you to park the car first."

For once, the hunter wisely accepted defeat and shut up. Throughout the rest of the drive back to Sam's house, they listened to an old Jackson Browne tape of John's that Dean had never yet managed to toss, and if Faith made a face when Dean began singing along to "Somebody's Baby" under his breath, at least she didn't say anything out loud.

Luckily, they arrived at the house at the same time as Sam and Caroline. Dean pulled up against the curb and watched as his little brother and his wife went inside. After a minute of waiting, he called Peter's phone. The teenager did not answer, so he dialed the number again. When the call went to voicemail for a second time, Dean shoved the car door open.

"I don't like this," he said sharply, and he started running into the house. Faith jumped out of the car and followed at his heels.

The front door was unlocked and hanging half-open. Dean sprinted through the short entryway, calling out for his brother. He jerked to a halt in the doorway of the living room, almost overbalancing and toppling forward when Faith ran into him from behind.

Sam stood near the far end of the couch, a pale Olivia laying limp as a rag-doll in his arms. Caroline was sobbing, her hands fluttering around her daughter's shoulders and face, pleading with the little girl to wake up.

"What happened?" barked Dean.

But Faith had already caught sight of the paired sharp-edged wounds half-hidden in the folds of in the toddler's neck. "Vampires," she hissed, thin fingertips probing along the crease of the girl's leg for a pulse. "She's still breathing, and the artery's thready here, but I've got it. Where's Peter?"

"Gone," mumbled Caroline.

"He's not here," confirmed Sam, meeting his brother's gaze over Caroline's bent head. His eyes were scared, terrified, and on instinct he looked to Dean for reassurance.

"So the shoe falls," muttered Faith to herself. "They must've got the kid." She grabbed both Caroline and Sam by the shoulders and propelled them to the front door. "You gotta go. _Now._ She needs a transfusion real bad. You need to get her to an emergency room - whichever one's closest. Tell them it was a dog bite."

Sam turned at the threshold to glance back at his brother. "Dean -"

"She's gonna be fine, Sammy," promised the older Winchester, putting as much confidence into his voice as he could, even though he didn't really feel it. He took the unconscious Olivia from his little brother's arms and held her while her parents climbed up into the truck. "But you gotta drive, fast."

Sam nodded, blinking back tears.

"You remember how to do CPR?" Faith asked as Dean gently placed his niece onto her mother's lap. "It's different on babies. Same-ish spot, but you use two fingers - index and middle - instead of your whole hand."

Caroline let out a hysterical, choking sound.

"Okay," said Dean, looking through the open passenger side door to his brother. "Drive. Call us as soon as you have news." He closed the door and stood back as the truck drove off, then turned to Faith. He tilted his head toward the house. "Come on."

The Slayer was already on his wavelength. "You want upstairs or down?"

"I'll take up. You take down."

Once inside, they split up. Dean charged the stairs, searching through all of the bedrooms and guest rooms for any sign of a disturbance. There was none. Even the blankets in the nursery crib were folded perfectly. He returned to the living room to find Faith, who had a black Starkphone in one hand and Peter's backpack in the other.

"Downstairs is clean," announced the woman flatly. "Other than some blood on the couch - not a lot, and could have come from Olivia. The kid would never have left his phone or his suit here, though. Not on purpose. You find anything?"

The hunter shook his head. "Nothing."

Faith frowned, crossing her arms over her stomach. "Sh-t. They've got him, Dean. I don't know who or how - he's easily stronger than half a dozen vamps - but they've got him." Her voice was steady, but her eyes were dark with concern.

"Looks that way. And with the suit and the phone here, no way to find him with that. Should we see if Reggie still remembers any of his military tracking?"

"He's a German Shepherd, not a bloodhound."

"His nose is still better than yours or mine."

"We could try a spell. I could call Willow?" suggested Faith, just spitballing now.

"You got any bits of his DNA on you? And isn't she still in Sumatra with Buffy?"

"Java now, I think. We could use something from his toothbrush at the house."

"Reggie's there, too."

Faith and Dean stared at one another for a brief moment, the Slayer's arms wrapped painfully tight around her rib cage, the hunter gnawing on the inside of his cheek.

"I don't want to leave," she admitted finally. "What if Peter comes back?"

They both knew the chances of that were next to nothing, but Dean guessed that she didn't want to admit it any more than he did. "Okay. You stay. I'll go to the house, grab Reggie, grab his toothbrush, throw some more supplies in the trunk, meet you back here." He headed for the door, calling back as he went, "We should call Stark."

The Slayer followed him out onto the front porch. "And tell him we lost his spider child? No way."

Dean continued walking to the Impala. "We need to do it."

"Can't we wait a couple hours?" pled Faith. "Try to find him first?"

"If Sam disappeared and someone knew and didn't tell me, I'd kill 'em," the man pointed out flatly, sliding behind the wheel and coaxing the Impala's engine to a full-throated rumble.

"Alright, fine," Faith capitulated, speaking through the open driver's window. "We talk to Stark. But you're telling him, not me."

"Deal." The hunter reversed, shifted gears, and was gone.

* * *

**9:30 p.m.**

Peter woke in a dark, windowless room of damp, molding brick. He felt sick and groggy, and his head was swimming. His shoulders ached from where they had been wrenched around and chained to something high above his head. _Great_ , reflected the teenager muzzily, giving an experimental tug and finding zero wriggle room in the combination of manacles, chains, and rope wrapped painfully tight around his wrists and forearms. Being kidnapped - _maybe?_ His memory was all blurry at the edges - was off to an inauspicious start, and Peter wasn't entirely sure if he was more relieved that no one was here to see him or more scared at being on his own.

As he struggled, a figure moved out of the shadows towards him, holding up a thin, fine-boned hand. "Shhh," it murmured. "Shhh."

To Peter's growing horror, he recognized her as the lady from earlier, the one who had appeared on Sam's front porch. Since then, she had changed her clothing from the borderline-normal into something antiquated - a dress in grey linen with a high-necked collar up to her chin and sleeves that extended all the way to her bony wrists. As she walked in Peter's direction, she moved strangely, as if dancing to music that only she could hear. The skirts of her dress swirled as her hips swayed lightly back and forth to the strains of an inaudible orchestra.

"Who are you?" spluttered the sixteen-year-old.

"Silly boy, not asking the right questions." His captor had approached close enough now that Peter could make out faint streaks of rusty brown at the corners of her mouth, streaks that he felt sickly certain were not lipstick. The lady tapped him on the nose "What are _you_?"

She leaned into the boy's personal space, resting her forehead against his. "What _are_ you?" she repeated. "Not like _her_ , but not like _him_ , either." The scent of her breath, heavy with copper and decay, shot Peter's hyperactive sense of smell straight into overdrive, and his stomach contracted, bile spilling upwards through his throat into the back of his mouth. He gagged and forced himself to swallow.

The lady continued to stare at him, her wide, pale eyes unnaturally still, and then she disappeared, and his aunt was standing in her place.

"Peter?" asked May, dropping to her knees in front of him, her voice high and strained with concern.

Peter could hardly belief his eyes, so great was the relief that washed through him. "Aunt May? Aunt May, what are you doing? Why are you here?"

His aunt smiled kindly. "Peter, dear, the question is why are _you_ here?"

* * *

**10:35 p.m.**

Dean held off on calling Tony Stark until he was halfway back to his place in Missoula. Then he first punched in the Slayer's number and got her on the line before calling the billionaire who he knew would be far, far less than pleased. Two heads were better than one when it came to talking people off of ledges, as well he knew.

In keeping with his suspicions, the hunter barely managed to get halfway through reciting the night's events before he was interrupted. " _What_ happened to Peter?" demanded Stark, his voice harsh and spiky with panic.

"Calm down, Stark. We'll find him," Dean said confidently. Apparently it was his job to reassure everyone tonight, since Faith seemed to be more on the pissed and delivering dark proclamations side of things.

"You _LOST_ him?"

"I'm less worried about losing him and more worried about the baby," muttered Faith.

"You _LOST_ a baby?" It sounded like Stark was starting to froth at the mouth.

"No, we just sent one to the hospital with Sam," the Slayer snapped back across the connection. "For a genius, you're being one hell of a dumbass. Do try to keep up."

"Faith," remonstrated Dean. He could hear her boots thumping against the linoleum of Sam's kitchen, and he knew she was angry-pacing. "We're as worried about him as you are, Tony. But we're going to do our best to get him home safe, soon as we can. Where are you right now?"

"The City."

"Boston's a city, too, you know," pointed out the Slayer. "Damn New Yorkers."

Thankfully for the sake of peace, the engineer chose to ignore her. "I'm at a fancy event awards thingy for Pepper, but I've got the Iron Man suit with me. I can be there in . . . three hours," Tony finished after a brief pause to think. "Four if I hit a head wind."

"Vampire sh-t is our sh-t to deal with," grumbled Faith.

"Right now, unless you've got a great way for us to find the kid when he doesn't have his suit or his phone or any tech at all, I'm not sure that there's much you could help us with," said Dean with much less grumbling.

"Well . . . actually . . ." Stark mumbled something almost unintelligible about Peter and his favorite pair of sneakers, a pair that Dean was very familiar with because Peter rarely wore them without pointing out their provenance as a gift from Mister Stark, and the pair that he had definitely been wearing when they dropped him off at Sam's for babysitting duty.

"You put tracers in his shoes?" repeated Faith. "Violation of privacy much?"

"Says the woman who's lo-jacked my car half a dozen times," snarked Dean, pointing out her hypocrisy.

"Okay, I get it. We all have trust issues," interrupted Stark smoothly, as the Slayer's hastily inhaled breath warned that another argument was about to start. "Look, you can both scold me as much as you want to later. But you have to find Peter."

"Of course," the hunter assured him. "You just send us those coordinates, and we'll take care of the rest."

"I should still come - " began the engineer.

Faith disagreed. "No. You should stay at your event. Not much your kind can do against vampires."

"I could set them on fire," said Tony.

"Always fun, but you can't interrogate a pile of ash," the Slayer reminded him darkly.

"Boston's got a point."

"Oh-kay." After a moment, Tony continued, "I'm sending the coordinates to your phones now. They should update in real time, but it would be easier to send detailed information to the suit, if you have it."

"We do," Faith told him, "But wouldn't we have to wear it for the AI interface to work?"

"I'm not putting that suit on," announced Dean. "There's no way in Hell it would fit me."

"Pity," Tony replied in a dry voice. "Cause I think the people online are right: you'd look great in spandex."

"I hate you."

"Hate you too, Dingus Waffle-thumper. There. Coordinates sent. Bring him home."

Stark ended his part of the call, and once again Dean and Faith were left alone with each other.

"I can take the suit and follow the sneakers," said the Slayer as soon as the click on the line signaled that Tony was gone. "I still think you should get Reg and some DNA. Just in case."

There was sense in what she said, and although she could not see him, Dean nodded in agreement. Faith on her own was more than a match for most vampires, and as soon as she got the Spiderman suit to Peter, any fight would be practically won. "You going on foot?"

"Caroline left her keys. I'll take her car, figure it out from there."

"Okay. I'll call when I'm leaving the house. Be careful."

Faith laughed, and he could hear a door opening and closing in the background. "You first."

There was a pause, and then she added in an uncharacteristically subdued voice, "Hey, before you hang up, I got something to tell you."

"Shoot."

"There was a vampire - about a week and a half ago. I staked him, but he said something to the girl he bit."

"What?" said Dean, growing impatient.

"Tell Faith hello. That's the message he gave her to pass on to me. They knew that I was here."

"So? Every fang in the Northwest knows we're here. Your no-tolerance policy ain't been exactly subtle. This isn't your fault, so stop being dramatic and get on that tracer."

"I ain't wearing the suit."

"Pretty sure you're a little too busty, anyway."

"Thanks, Dean," replied Faith sarcastically.

"Uh huh."

A little more sincerely, she added, "And, uh, thanks for the other thing, too."

"You call me on my crap; I call you on your crap. As far as I'm concerned, that makes us equal."

"Yeah. Call me when you get Reggie and head back?"

"You got it."

* * *

**10:42 p.m.**

_Where . . . where am I?_ Slowly, everything came flooding back to him. This time, Peter was filled with a sense of urgency. _Gotta get out. Gotta get out_. His head was less woozy, and his spider senses were screaming in his head so loudly that his vision flashed brilliant while for five seconds straight.

"I am not nothing without the suit," Peter mumbled to himself. "I am _not_. I got this. I got this." He toed off his tennis shoes and then dropped down, stretching his arms out far above his head in order to get as much of the soles of his feet on the ground as he could, bending his knees into a half crouch. Then he grabbed hold of the chains and jumped up, flipping himself upside down, his socks sticking to the ceiling. He swung back and forth, bending his feet behind him to push off of the wall. He kept swinging, forwards and backwards until he managed to pull the chains loose from the wall.

_Now would be a good time to be the Hulk_ , he thought, landing easily on the concrete floor and running in his socks to the door. It was locked but he tugged and tugged until the brassy knob gave way. Peter ran up the stairs into a deserted hallway and then along the hallway into a shabby living room which was the opposite of deserted - there were at least a dozen people sprawled on couches and chairs and air mattress, and two or three more who were laying on the ground and not moving in a very particular not-moving way that the teenager tended to associate with road kill.

"Oops." Peter froze, glancing around the ceilings, calculating a run up the walls, across the popcorned plaster to the front door.

He turned around to see a familiar girl - a woman? - standing behind him, a heavy stone vase filled with dirt and flowers held high above her head.

"A-manda?" he spluttered, recognizing the vase as the kind that rested beside a gravestone.

The girl grinned. "Hello, Spiderman," she whispered, and _clank!_ brought the vase down onto the top of his skull.

Peter crumpled. He struggled back to consciousness as Amanda and the others dragged him back down to the cellar. This time, instead of chaining him to a hook in the wall, they twisted his limbs into a pretzel, arms wrenched behind his back, chains looping around his ankles, knees bound up to his chest. Peter had no room for movement, much less momentum - much like a buzzard in a cage too small for takeoff.

"All this trouble, over a kid," grumbled one of the vamps.

"You heard our lady," snapped Amanda.

The crowd parted for the woman in gray.

"Clever boy, but not nearly clever enough," said the lady. She smiled again, suddenly all sharp teeth, and leaned in close.

"Ungh!" muttered Peter around the thick arm of the vampire holding him down.

The lady grabbed a fistful of hair, yanked is head to the side, and bit down on the soft skin at the base of his neck. Everything exploded into red pain. Peter screamed. All around him, vampires laughed.

* * *

**August 18th, 2017, Missoula, Montana, 11:07 p.m.**

As soon as Dean had unlocked the front door, he was swamped by the German Shepherd, bounding to his side and barking agitatedly. Apparently, they had forgotten to feed him before they left.

"Down," commanded the hunter, and Reggie slunk off towards the living room, his ears drooping.

Feeling somewhat guilty, Dean apologized with a conciliatory, "Good boy, Reg." The man patted the side of his hip, and the German Shepherd bounded back to his side. They ran upstairs, where Dean paused only long enough to grab Peter's toothbrush out of the bathroom and pull a stained t-shirt with a caffeine molecule printed on the front out of the laundry basket before stuffing both items into a plastic bag and running back outside to the Impala.

Dean opened the driver's side rear door to let the dog into the car, staring at his alone reflection in the car window. When he turned, there was a young co-ed standing by the tail pipe, holding a concrete vase in both hands.

"Hello, Dean."

The hunter reached for the Colt revolver tucked into the waistband of his jeans. "Do I know you?"

_Crash!_

For a long moment, there was silence, and then, trapped behind the window glass, Reggie whined.

* * *

**11:20 p.m.**

Faith followed the GPS from the suburbs back into Missoula proper, Peter's backpack sitting in the shotgun seat next to her. The blinking icon on her cell phone was located somewhere right in the middle of the Sunset Memorial Gardens cemetery. The Slayer frowned; vampires really had no class and no respect these days, didn't they? First kidnapping spider people, then dragging them out to sacred ground. Well, at least they hadn't taken him out to the Veterans Cemetery. Still, when she got ahold of whoever had spider-napped her spider, she was going to kick their ass with extra prejudice -and then she'd stake them.

After parking the car near the front gate of the cemetery, the woman shoved her arms through the straps of the backpack, slammed on the parking brake, and left the car. She scaled the cemetery fence easily. The Slayer set off along one of the dirt roads that meandered through the graves, with the tracker that Tony had sent as her only guide. Faith made it halfway through the cemetery when she caught sight of a figure - hooded, roughly Peter's shape and size - walking among the gravestones about fifty yards away.

Without pausing to think, the Slayer gave chase. She leapt over the shorter headstones and darted around the taller ones. As she closed the distance between them, Faith identified the sneakers as definitely belonging to Peter. Hearing her approach, the figure turned its head, revealing delicate features and streak of blond hair. Not Peter, then.

Faith continued to run, passing an abandoned backhoe and a fresh grave on her left, now only twenty feet away from the person wearing Peter's shoes. She kicked it into an even higher gear and jumped forward, catching the sneakers-thief around the waist and dragging them down to the ground.

"Hey," the Slayer said angrily, pushing up onto her knees and grabbing the thief's shoulders to flip them over onto their back. She reached for her stake and held the point against the thief's ribcage.

"What the hell are you doing, lady?" yelled the thief. To Faith's surprise, a deepened, post-puberty voice came out from behind the long blond hair. "Get off me!"

"Where did you get those shoes?" demanded Faith. Her heart was racing, the blood pounding in her ears. With the hand that wasn't holding the stake, she pressed two fingers against the kid's neck. There was a pulse. So not a vampire then. Her stomach jumped. Dammit. She hadn't expected this and wasn't quite sure how to handle it.

"I found them."

Faith shook her head. "They belong to a friend of mine."

"No, no - they were over there." He gestured vaguely in the direction of Sunset Memorial's front entrance.

"When and where?" the woman snapped.

"Like, ten minutes ago, I saw them over by the gate. I live on the other side of the cemetery - and I was just cutting through on my way home from work when you attacked me."

Faith lifted her stake away from the teenager's chest, but she did not release him, continuing to pin him to the ground with her knees. "I didn't exactly attack you," she lied. "Where by the gate?"

"Near the new plot - like, not too far from that one for the girl who died last week after that pit bull attack."

The Slayer's guts lurched again. "What girl?" she asked.

"Amanda Forrest-something or other."

_Dog attack, Amanda_. Faith fought back an overwhelming sense of gloom. So her and Peter's rescue mission the week before had not been a success after all. _Dammit, dammit, dammit,_ she thought furiously in the privacy of her head and despair.

"Those shoes were stolen from my friend," she said aloud. "I'm going to need them back."

"Fine," retorted the kid. "Just get off of me, okay?"

"Shoes first," insisted Faith.

He kicked the sneakers off of his feet, and the woman gathered them into one hand by the laces. Then and only then did she stand up. The kid scrambled to his feet and took off at a dead run for the far end of the cemetery.

"Dammit," the Slayer muttered to herself, watching the kid run. She lifted her phone and stared at the screen. "Well, there goes that plan. _Dammit_."

Well, nothing for it now but to call Dean. He must have gotten hung up in traffic or at the house, because she had yet to hear from him. With a heavy sigh, the woman scrolled through the contacts on her phone. While the call dialed out, she started walking back towards the gate and Caroline's car, her shoulders slumped.

She was so distracted by her thoughts that when something moved in the periphery of her vision, she startled. Faith spun to the left as another darkened figure ran past her.

"Dammit," she repeated for the third time, and she took off running without paying much attention to the ground beneath her, even as she approached a series of open graves.

As a result, Faith stumbled over the lip of the first grave, and fell in, landing with a heavy crash against the far wall of dirt and twisting her right ankle. The backhoe thirty feet off suddenly roared to life and began moving. Faith attempted to scramble to her feet, but her ankle gave way beneath her, and she dropped to her knees.

"Come on," she said to herself. "Get up. Get up."

She had reached up, her fingers scrabbling at the edge of the grave, and was pulling herself back into a standing position, her weight distributed entirely between her arms and her left leg when an entire truckload of cemetery dirt was dumped on top of her. Faith was knocked flat onto her back beneath the dirt. She choked and closed her eyes against the dust and grit scratching its way into her corneas. The Slayer could already sense the nightmares that would follow this. Coughing and struggling to breathe, Faith beat her head backwards against the earth beneath her in frustration. This was _not_ how she had wanted to win Bad Dreams Bingo.

* * *

**11:45 p.m.**

This time, when Peter came back to the funhouse mirror of reality that the strange woman had dragged him into, he was not alone. Chained to the wall next to him, looking even more dourly pissed than usual, was Dean Winchester. There was a nasty lump on his right temple, bright red already blossoming into deep purple, and his green eyes were dark with fatigue.

"Welcome to the party, kid," said the hunter in a quiet voice. "Although I guess you were here before me. You see who our friends are?"

"Vampires."

Dean snorted. "Yeah, kinda figured that out. You've got yourself a little love bite there," he nodded to the left side of Peter's neck.

Huh. Maybe that explained why it hurt every time that he turned his head.

The hunter continued, "You notice anything more specific than regular run-of-the-mill vamps?"

"One of them was weird - weirder than the others."

"Go on."

Peter gave a brief run-down of his encounters with the bizarre woman in the long dress, concluding with, "I busted out of these chains once, but the woman was right there, and then when I woke up, my neck hurt, and I'm so stupid. I don't have my suit, I don't have the web shooters, and that lady . . . I think she did something to my head. I don't - I can't, I can't think straight. And now we're both damsels in distress. I mean, I'm a damsel in distress - you're not a damsel in distress. "

"Cut it out with the damsel crap," grunted Dean with more urgency than irritation. "Start your Spiderling thing. You've got super strength, don't you? Nothing wrong about being in distress. Let's just get the hell out of here."

Peter was barely listening. The panicked thoughts that had been running around his head all night finally had an outlet, and while he knew that he ought to shut up and follow the hunter's instructions, his need for explanation and reassurance was greater than his need to be a good soldier. "I don't know what she wants, but she said something about waiting for Faith," he whispered.

"Yeah, I think I know whose game we're playing." Dean had pushed up onto his tip-toes in order to twist around and get a better look at Peter. He was frowning in concern. "You drink anything?" he asked, suddenly sounding suspicious.

The teenager blinked, struggling to focus on the question. "What? Who? What?"

"The lady in the dress that put you here. Her name's Drusilla. From what you've said, I'm guessing she's the one that bit you and left that scrape on your neck. _Did you drink anything_?" he repeated, more urgently.

"No," said Peter softly. "I don't remember - I don't think so, no. How, uh, how do you know her name?"

"She's an old not-friend of Faith's." Dean paused, shifting his weight from foot to foot, trying out his manacles with a careful twist of his wrists, first to the right and then to the left. "Long story that we don't have time for now, but short version is that I'm starting to wonder if Drusilla's got a thing against Faith. Or a thing _for_ Faith. Sometimes with Dru, it's kinda hard to tell the difference. . . If you ever hear 'em tell you that crazy is hot, trust me on this, Pete. It isn't. It's really, really not. The thing that makes her dangerous is that she's got magic psychic skills. That'd be why you can't remember, probably why you haven't been able to bust yourself out of here . . ." Dean paused, hunting for the next conversation topic. Anything to keep the kid talking and thinking. "Why are you only wearing socks?"

"Took my shoes off - they don't stick to things without the suit."

"And here I was worried that someone might have stolen them."

Peter blinked, trying to concentrate. "Like something out of Hocus Pocus?"

"I have no idea what that is."

"We need to work on your knowledge of 90's Disney classics."

"Sorry, kid. Bit too busy ganking monsters and trying to make my dad proud and keeping Sam alive to watch the House of Mouse. Besides, isn’t Disney for little kids and girls?"

"Hey! Lots of people appreciate that movie. It's a classic, and it has Bette Middler!"

"Yeah, here's the thing, Pete. You lost me at Bette Middler. Wanna know why? Because you’re always gonna lose me at Bette Middler. Sounds like the kind of thing Sam would be into. When we get out of here, you two can paint each other's nails and have a pillow fight about it."

"Speaking of getting out of here, you don't seem that worried." The teenager's filter was long gone, lost somewhere around the time the strange lady - Drusilla? - had first worked her mind-mojo on him.

"Why aren't you more upset, if she's as crazy as you say she is?" asked Peter, tilting his head backwards against the brick to try and see Dean's expression, but the hunter's face was masked in shadow as he continued slowly and steadily working at loosening the screw that connected his manacles with the mortar of the brick wall.

"'Cause this time, knock on wood, it's only Drusilla."

" _This_ time? What happened last time?" If they ever got out of here - _when_ they got out of here - Peter attempted to borrow Dean's confidence and convince himself that escape was inevitable. _When_ they got out of here, he was finally going to demand that Faith tell him her full life story, not the bits and pieces that she tended to hand out like she was some super secret agent or something. Sometimes, Peter felt that the Slayer was more shifty than half of the SHIELD agents that Mister Stark complained about.

"Last time was bad; Angelus was around."

"Who?"

"Tell you later. Plus, last time they had both me an' Faith. This time, we're bait. And since Drusilla likes to play with her food, we've got some time before she gets impatient waiting for Faith and decides to kill us."

"And that's supposed to make me feel better?" squeaked Peter.

"No." Dean grunted heavily and threw himself to the left, giving his shoulders a final wrench and putting the stress of his entire weight on the crumbling mortar. The screw came free from the wall, and he swung his chained arms up and over his head to bring his hands around to the front. "This is."

"Oh."

"Now come on, and do your superhero thing and bust yours. We need to get out of here before she gets back."

"Too late," gulped the teenager, staring at something over the hunter's shoulder.

Dean moved instinctively to his right, interposing himself between the vampire and the teenager before turning around to face their captor. "Drusilla."

"Naughty, naughty, naughty," trilled the vampire, but her grin was delighted. "The itsy bitsy spider and the heavenly sword, all caught up in my net."

The hunter grimaced. "Still as off your meds as ever, ain't you?"

Ignoring this, Drusilla went on, "The stars don't sing much of you anymore, my sweet. You've gotten boring. All dry, all tired, no more fun." Here she closed her eyes, her mouth dropping open into a grotesque moan, her hands behind her head, sharp elbows jutting out, and thrust her hips back and forth several times in the air before dropping her arms and laughing shrilly. "The rusty sword has lost its destiny."

"Well, sh-t," exhaled Dean casually, but he took a careful step forwards, his hands low at his sides, spread out as far as the manacles would allow, fingers outstretched, ready to make his move. "Gotta say, this isn't exactly how I was plannin' on spending the rest of my Friday night."

"No, not fun at all. And naughty boys must be taught a lesson," purred Drusilla, her eyes flashing.

"Bring it, looney tunes."

The vampire dashed forwards, her ethereal features metamorphosing into a heavy, ridged brow as great ivory fangs sprouted from her jaws. There was a sudden flash of wood in Dean's hand as it dropped to his back pocket, and the two collided with a resounding crash. The wood thudded onto the cellar floor as the hunter went down beneath a hundred and twenty pounds of extremely motivated vampire. After a brief struggle, Dean went disturbingly still, and Drusilla pushed herself up, triumphant. Her features morphed back. Except for the blood smeared across her nose and chin, she looked almost human.

"There," she cooed, stroking her fingers across the unresponsive man's cheek, the gesture almost loving. "All better."


	11. Our Lady of Perpetual Suffering

**A/N:** Happy New Year, all!

* * *

**August 18th, 2017, Missoula, Montana, 11:40 p.m.**

_Frak. Frak. Frak._ The rhythmic cursing chant was the only formed thought in Faith's head as she kicked and clawed her way through the one hundred and eight cubic feet of grave dirt separating her from the twenty-one percent oxygen, seventy-odd percent nitrogen night air above. Slayer training hadn't quite prepared her for this, so she improvised. Faith thrust downwards with her legs in a scissor kick, as if treading water, while at the same time she scrabbled to use her cupped hands to push away the soil on top of her.

Her lungs were burning, her throat dry and scratchy with earth, when at last her torn fingernails made it through the dirt and out into the open air. They were quickly followed by her hands, her wrists, her forearms, and finally her head and shoulders. Coughing, the Slayer attempted to get some of the dirt out of her mouth. She rested for a moment before pulling the rest of her body out of the grave. Thankfully, the backpack had survived her unanticipated adventure, and she did not have to go back in for Peter's Spider suit.

Faith danced from one foot to another in an attempt to shake the earth free from her clothes. She looked around for any signs of whoever had tried to bury her alive but saw no one. The cemetery was once again abandoned.

Frustrated, the Slayer checked her phone, which had been tucked into her front pocket and so was mostly unscathed. She still had no texts from Dean, but there was a missed call from Sam. Frowning in concern, the Slayer started walking in the direction of Caroline's car and called him back.

"Hey, Sam," she said as soon as a click on the other end of the line alerted her that someone had picked up. "How's Livvy doing?"

"She's fine," replied Sam, but his tone was far too terse and choppy for fine.

"What's wrong?" pressed Faith. She passed beneath the cemetery's front gate and extended a middle finger up at the curving arch overhead. Screw Sunset Memorial, and screw whoever left backhoes lying around where vampires could get a hold of them.

"Dean's gone."

Faith stopped dead in her tracks. The gut-churning worry in her intestines vaulted exponentially higher, and for a split second it morphed from concern and mild anxiety into nauseating terror. Pushing the fear back down where it belonged, the Slayer demanded, " _What?_ "

"The doctors decided to admit Olivia overnight to observe her, and Caroline asked me to bring her some clothes, 'cuz hers had blood all over them. Your place is closer to the hospital, so I thought I'd borrow some of your things and grab that spare set that Dean keeps for me in the garage and then race right back - I figured you wouldn't mind."

"Not in an emergency situation, no." Faith unlocked the car and got inside. She noted absently that her fingers were trembling where they gripped the steering wheel. Too much adrenaline, she figured. Aloud, she said, "Cut to the chase, Sam. What happened to your brother?"

"When I got to your place, the lights were all off. The Impala was parked in the driveway, and Reggie was stuck in the backseat, barking his head off and going frantic. I let him out, and he just started spazzing, running in circles around me and the car. I checked the house, just to be sure, but there was nobody there. And then I found Dean's phone on the cement under the car. Screen was cracked, the back of it was bent in half - it's broken."

"G-d _dammit_ ," muttered the Slayer. "You still at the house?"

"Yeah. I've looked all over, and there's not a single sign of what happened - no footprints, no drag marks, no tire prints, nothing. Just a plastic tulip, like the nice kind of fake flower. That's when I called you, but you didn't answer."

"Sorry about that," Faith explained briskly. "Somebody thought it would be fun to bury me alive."

"Oh my G-d. Are you okay?"

The Slayer hurried to reassure him. "Yeah, I'm fine. Just pissed. Frakking frakking, frakking, frak. Look, I'm headed your way. I can be there in like ten. Not sure what you sticking around can do, though. You can leave the phone on the kitchen table and stick Reggie back in the house. Go back to Caroline and Olivia; I'll feel better if you're with them and -"

Sam interrupted her. "It's not just Peter that's gone now," he said sharply. "It's Dean, too. You need help. I'm gonna help you find him. The doctors can take care of Olivia, and he's my brother, Faith."

"Hey, listen to me, Sammy. Listen to me. Hospitals are not vampire proof. They aren't residences, so fangs don't need permission to waltz in. They are open access, no security, free entry. You hear me? A vampire could just walk in there, _right now_ , and finish what they started with Livvy - or with Caro. You need to go back to the hospital and protect them."

There was a sharp intake of breath. "I'd . . . I'd forgotten about that," the hunter admitted, his tone becoming more and more panicked with each successive word. "I - do you - are you sure -"

"Perfectly. Besides, I'm starting to think that now is turning into a really, really good time for an angel ex machina."

"You can't mean - ?"

"Whatever it takes."

"But didn't he say that he was going cold turkey on meddling in human affairs?"

"That," said Faith grimly, "was before Dean went missing. Go take care of your family, Sam. I'll handle this."

The line clicked again as Sam hung up. For a brief moment, Faith felt like screaming. Instead, she tightened up on the brakes and drummed her fingers angrily on the steering wheel, staring up at the red traffic light and waiting for it to turn green. Despising herself for indulging, she held down the 1 button on her phone keypad and allowed it to go to speed dial.

There was no ringing or buzzing of a call going out, only a short pause and then the gruff, "You've reached Dean Winchester. Leave a message at the beep."

Faith hung up before it could reach the beep, and then she dialed a third number.

"Hello?" came the quick answer.

"Heyyyy," the woman dragged the word out until it almost resembled a sentence in and of itself. "I've got some more bad news."

"More?" echoed Tony Stark incredulously.

Deciding that it was best to get this part over with quickly, she answered, "Yeah. First off, your tracker's not working. You got anything else that might be useful? Like a GPS in Peter's underpants or something?"

"Okay, now you're just being weird, and I feel personally insulted. I may be paranoid, but I'm not creepy."

Faith grit her teeth. As much as she liked Stark during the best of times, her banter tolerance was reaching an all time low at the moment. "Wasn't insulting you personally, Tony. I just have to cover all the bases."

"I get it. And, uh, no, I don't have a tracker on anything else."

"Fantastic," said the Slayer sourly in a way that implied it was anything but. "'Cause here's the second thing - Dean's disappeared, and I'm like ninety-nine point seven percent sure that the same people who took Peter took him. Otherwise, it'd be one hell of a coincidence, and -"

"And those don't happen," the man finished for her. "Look, uh, Faith, I think it's time to call in the cavalry. I'm stepping out of this party and coming your way now. You need me."

"On one condition," qualified the Slayer. "You come straight to Peter's suit, okay? I'll have it on me. Don't go anywhere - _anywhere_ \- else in Missoula. We already got two men down, and I ain't got the time to go catch a tenderfoot if you get yourself into fang trouble. Comprendes, Stark?"

"Your wish is my command," Tony rushed to assure her. "Although to be honest, in this situation it's more like your command is my command." He paused and then asked cautiously, "How much worse have the odds just gotten? Do you think they'll be all right?"

The worry surged again, and again Faith shoved it back down where the sun didn't shine. "I hope so," she replied with less impatience and more empathy. "And I'm about to call in an old arcane favor or two, so our odds are getting a little better. Do me a solid?"

"Anything."

The automatic promise almost made her smile. "Bring me a cooler of O negative with you, will ya? I've got all the IV tubing and other transfusion supplies, but all we've got in the house is lamb for rituals and pig for emergency vamp rehabilitation. I was an idiot and didn't restock on human after we ran out a couple months ago."

"I - uh, I can do that. Will we – will we need it?" he added apprehensively.

"Not sure. Hope not, but we prolly will. Anyways, ya always got to be prepared. I'm pretty sure the Slayers that live longest were Boy Scouts in their previous or subsequent lives," Faith added dryly.

"Okay, you got it. I'll grab the blood and be there in a couple of hours."

"Thanks, Tony. I appreciate it." Ending the conversation, Faith hung up. The red light in front of her at last changed to green, and she slammed her foot down onto the gas pedal.

* * *

**12:00 a.m.**

After far, far too many minutes of silence, Dean gave an unearthly groan, flopped onto his side, and slowly pushed himself up onto his knees and elbows.

"Wakey, wakey, little darling," trilled Drusilla. "Mommy's got all sorts of lovely plans for you."

Dean lifted his eyes from the ground and stared balefully at the vampire. His face was still pale, but at least the wound at his neck had stopped oozing and had started to clot over. Grimacing at the sight, Peter pulled at his chains. His shoulders were going numb, and he wondered if this was what chronic dislocation felt like.

"What kind of plans?" asked the teenager, trying to sound clever. From the irritated glance that Dean sent him and the gleam of self-satisfaction that flashed across Drusilla's face, he was being anything but.

"Family is what matters," hissed the vampire, almost talking to herself. "They've taken my family - all lost, all gone. Grandmother is lost, and _she_ took my Daddy, and _she_ took my darling Spike."

"What's a spoike?" Peter asked, pronouncing it the way that he had heard it.

"My Spike, my William, my beloved, beloved boy. _She_ took him," spat Drusilla. "That horrid little Slayer. Well, now I'll take _her_ family. And here you are, two beautiful boys, just fallen plop plop into my lap . . ."

"So you came here looking for revenge," surmised Peter.

"Why Faith?" Dean pressed. Some of the color had returned to his face, and his voice was stronger. "Isn't Buffy the one who took Angel and Spike away from you? Why don't you go after her?"

"Because the stars don't sing of her," explained Drusilla. She dropped onto her hands and knees and crawled towards him, grinning wide. "Not that they sing of that nasty Faith, either. But they do sing of _you_ , still. Sad songs and regretful songs, but songs all the same. And the melody has a new note - _him_." She nodded at Peter. "Spiders and swords and stars - all lovely things that start with 's.'"

The hunter had reached the end of his patience. "Look," he said caustically, scrambling backwards, halfway falling onto his rear end, "I'm not trying to be super rude here or anything, but could you go ahead and kill me? Because listening to you talk is worse."

Drusilla stood, crossed the remaining space between them, and backhanded the hunter across the face in less time than it took for Peter to breathe in. She knocked Dean flat onto his back and straddled him, her knees pressing down on his upper arms. The man struggled fruitlessly and glared up at her.

"Get the frak off me."

"Ah, ah, ah." Drusilla pushed his hands away and then reached down to trace a pattern across the man's shoulder's and chest. "I'm going to carve the stars - here, here, here, here." Her path ended directly between his navel and the belt buckle on his jeans. "Let's see if that will make you sing."

Dean spit in her face, and she backhanded him again, splitting his lip.

"Bad boy."

The hunter coughed on the blood that trickled down his throat. "Great," he complained lightly, but the hatred in his green eyes was enough to drill holes through reinforced steel. "Torture porn. You know, Dru, I'm only a fan of one of those two things."

"Dean -" said Peter worriedly. He hadn't said anything, afraid that he would only make things worse, but now he found himself unable to keep his mouth shut any longer.

"Be quiet, Pete," the older man commanded, quiet yet firm. "This is between me and the crazy bitch over here."

Peter protested, "But - "

Rising to her feet, Drusilla kicked Dean once in the stomach so hard that he doubled up. Then she walked over to Peter, who was still chained into a pretzel. "Shhh, little lamby." She ran one slender fingertip down his forehead from the edge of his hairline to the curve of his nose. "Close your eyes. Mommy hasn't the time for you now."

She tapped him once on the tip of the nose, and Peter's eyes rolled up back into his head, and the teenager went limp.

"See?" said the vampire delightedly, once again straddling the hunter. This time, she settled herself on top of his hips. "Already you make me stronger."

Drusilla ripped Dean's plaid shirt open from the top down, sending buttons flying She frowned when she saw the black t-shirt underneath. Grabbing the hem with her long fingernails, she tore the undershirt in half from bottom to top, slowly licking a pathway up the man's chest as she went.

Gritting his teeth, the hunter grimaced and looked away.

"Don't worry, sweetling," crooned the vampire, her mouth hovering half an inch above the space where his shoulder met his neck on the side that she hadn't bit already. "Just another taste to get you nice and ready before the fun starts. And then, you're going to feel _everything_."

* * *

**August 19th, 2017, Missoula, Montana, 12:05 am.**

Faith slammed the front door behind her, slid the top three dead bolts, and nudged the German Shepherd away with her shin. "Sit," she commanded brusquely.

Reggie sat.

The Slayer dropped Peter's backpack onto the entryway floor and raced up the staircase. She shouldered open the door into her room and knelt in front of the cedar chest at the foot of her bed. Faith yanked her wallet open, fished out a small brass key, and unlocked the chest, and started digging through its contents. She pulled out two large shoeboxes, each labelled with black marker scribbled on a strip of masking tape. Tucking the shoeboxes under her arm, she ran back downstairs, where she set one box on the bottom step and opened the other.

While the German Shepherd watched and whined, Faith lifted a bundle of dried moss and a small glass bottle of holy water out of the shoebox. She sprinkled holy water over the moss, then lit the bottom with a a Bic lighter. Placing the smoldering moss on the tile in front of the door, she retrieved a cross from the box, held it up to the locked doorframe, and recited a stream of Latin, ending with "hicce verbis, consensus recesses est." The Slayer stepped back automatically as the moss exploded into a gust of flame that reached halfway up to the ceiling.

Reggie retreated into the living room, whimpering.

"Man up, dog."

Retrieving the second shoebox, Faith retreated to the library. She closed the library door and then pressed a spot on the edge of the work table. There was a groaning noise, and the concrete wall to her left receded to reveal a hidden closet with a black mini fridge in the corner. The Slayer pushed past three bottles of diet coke and an expired package of yogurt to find a jar filled with dark, congealing liquid, which she placed on the oak table. Reaching back inside the closet, Faith yanked out a disposable plastic tablecloth. She rolled the tablecloth out across the cement floor and opened the jar of lambs' blood. After she painted a quick circle in blood on the cloth, the Slayer drew lines dividing the circle into four quadrants. Inside each quadrant, she inscribed a slightly different squiggle.

Next, she dumped the contents of the shoebox onto the floor. She placed a small white tea light candle at each end of the dividing lines and lit them with her Bic. Then she set a small copper bowl in the center of the circle and quickly tossed small bundles of thyme and saffron tied with pale ribbon into the bowl, along with a handful of crumbled oak leaves and a month's wroth of Thursdays that had been cut out of an AKC puppies calendar. Faith poured a drop of holy oil onto the top of the Thursdays, struck a match from the Graceland wedding chapel match book, and dropped it into the bowl.

She stared down at a laminated card with an incantation written across it, shook her head in a gesture of rejection, and bellowed, "CASTIEL! Get your feathered ass down here!"

There was a clap of thunder, a great rush of wind, and all the lights in the room went dark. Out in the hall, Reggie howled. Lightning flashed, brilliant white, and standing on the far side of the circle was a somber man in a trench coat.

"Faith," said the angel, frowning at her.

The Slayer straightened up. "Castiel."

They stared at one another for a long, silent moment, the air heavy with nearly a decade's worth of competition and mistrust.

"I need help," Faith finally admitted begrudgingly, once the silence had dragged on just long enough to be incredibly awkward.

"You didn't have to yell," Castiel remarked, stepping around the outside curve of the summoning circle. The still-burning candles were the only light remaining, and they illuminated his solemn features from below, shadows flickering across his forehead and chin.

In a quiet voice, the woman said, "I wasn't sure if you would come. But it's an emergency."

"I assumed it would have to be one in order for you to trouble yourself enough to summon me," remarked the angel with more than a little dry irony. "Where is Dean?"

Faith fought the urge to fidget like a five-year-old. Castiel's chilly blue eyes were judgmental at the best of times, and tonight was about a million miles away from good times. "That's the emergency," she blurted. "Vampires got him - and the kid."

"Which child?"

"Peter Parker. He's - "

"Spiderman, yes. I do check in with Dean from time to time."

"I'm all out of terrestrial ways to find him, but I don't think he's warded from angels."

"Unlike Dean."

The Slayer nodded her head. "Exactly. Unlike Dean. So here's what I'm asking: find the kid and take me where he is. I know, I know," she added before he could interrupt her. "You've got higher priorities than us humans. But be honest with me, Castiel. Do you ever have a higher priority than Dean?"

The angel frowned and turned the question around on her. "Do you?"

"Sure, I do." Faith shrugged. "Kickin' ass, takin' names, savin' lives. Look, I woulda called you earlier, but we both know you woulda told me to frak off."

"And of course your pride would have had no role to play in that," muttered Castiel motto voce.

"I'm not the only proud one here. Come on, dude, do we have to do this now?"

"I am not the one being hostile."

"I'm not hostile!" snapped Faith, losing her temper. "You just irritate the crap out of me."

"The feeling is decidedly mutual," he replied. "After all, you are reckless, impulsive, excessively violent -"

"Plus I'm quasi-atheist white trash from South Boston. Don't forget that part, Sparkles."

"Well, since you mention it . . ."

They eyeballed one another for about fifteen seconds, and then the Slayer huffed with laughter. "So I guess it's business as usual, then, huh - mutual dislike with a side order of toning it down around Dean, once we find him? After all, isn't he like your prime directive or some other sh-t like that?"

"And yours the same, I believe."

"Mmph." Faith huffed in dislike. "Here." She whipped out her phone and scrolled through the pictures to find a shot of Peter and Dean mid-hot dog eating competition a few weekends ago. "This is the kid. Can you find him?"

Castiel exhaled. He made a show of blinking and shaking his head as if to clear it. "I can try," he said flatly. "If he is un-warded as you say, it should not be impossible."

"Great," said Faith. She allowed herself to experience a tiny fragment of relief. "You go looking - I'll pack myself a kit."

Leaving the angel to his own devices in the library, the Slayer hurried back upstairs to her bedroom and the cedar chest. She unzipped the top of Peter's backpack and removed a calculus textbook, two half-bent spiral notebooks, a handful of pens, and far too many crumpled pieces of paper. In their place, she thrust in half a dozen stakes and a liter-sized bottle of holy water. Ignoring her still-twinging ankle, she exchanged her going-out boots for her heavy duty Doc Martens, then slipped a stake into the side of each boot. She strapped her favorite crossbow to her back, her second favorite knife to her left hip, and a revolver filled with silver bullets to her other hip. After opening another bottle of holy water, she poured that into a Super-Soaker modified with a pressurized air canister and slung the strap over one shoulder.

Finished with the chest, Faith went out into the garage. She pulled a beer bottle out of the recycling bin and carefully poured it halfway full of gasoline from the small red gas can that went to the lawnmower. Then the Slayer topped off the bottle with cheap vodka from the emergency stash that she had hid out underneath Dean's tool bench. She stuck half of a grease-covered rag into the neck of the bottle and then covered the top with saran wrap and a rubber band. Faith was just checking her pocket to make sure that the Bic lighter was still in place when the door from the garage to the mud room opened, and Castiel joined her.

"I have found him," he announced. The angel raised an eyebrow at the Slayer's arsenal, but wisely said nothing.

"That was quick."

"He is not far."

"He or they?"

"They. Dean is with him."

"About time we had some good news," Faith exhaled. "What's the sit-rep like?"

"They are being held in the basement of an abandoned house. There are at least a dozen vampires in the room above."

She nodded. That sounded about right. "And in the basement itself?"

"One vampire, female."

"Let's go." Faith held her arm out to the angel.

"Upstairs or down?"

"That depends," said the Slayer with a feral grin. "You feeling like throwing down some heavenly wrath before or after we rescue the princesses from the tower?"

"Basement," Castiel corrected her. "They are in the basement."

"Okay, there it is. Rescue first, Hulk Smash later. Either way, c'mon."

Castiel took her hand, and the world dissolved into a spiraling twist of color and sound that resolved itself barely seconds before Faith thought she would give in to the urge to vomit. Her boots landed with a heavy thud on a cement floor, and she straightened out of a crouch to take in the scene before her.

"Holy frakking hell," swore the Slayer. She briefly scanned first Peter, who probably had both shoulders dislocated from the way his arms were bent back behind him and the green tinge to his face, then Dean, who was sprawled across the floor, unmoving. Someone had been busy carving crosses and six-pointed stars all across the skin of his chest, which barely rose and fell with each breath. Finally, her eyes landed on the aspiring scar artist, and she elbowed down Castiel's upraised hand, already lifted to smite the vampire. "Cut it out, angel dust," she growled under her breath. "Crazy town's mine."

Taking a step forward, Faith repeated herself. "Holy frakking hell, Drusilla, what the frak are you doing here?"

Instead of giving a straightforward answer to the question, the vampire continued her work, tracing the edges of Dean's anti-possession tattoo with the tip of one of her sharp fingernails, outlining it in blood. "Hide and jump and run and catch," she sing-songed in satisfaction, a dark curtain of hair falling across her face and hiding it. "Run and catch, run and catch."

She turned her head to the side suddenly, the moment sharp and reptilian. The expression on her face was one of contemplative ecstasy. "Has Faithy come out to play at last?"

Faith's fingers danced across the stock of the stake stuck through her belt. "Next time you want me to play, Dry, you should ask first," she said lightly. "Don't start the game without me. And you really, really shouldn't take out my people."

"Did I not leave enough clues?" wondered the vampire. She lifted her blood-streaked hand from the limp hunter's chest and licked the ruby red liquid from her index finger. Her eyes widened in delight. "Sweet as a berry," she purred.

Although her stomach crawled, the Slayer did not even wince. "You're disgusting," she pointed out.

"And you?" the vampire laughed. "Disappointing. I leave clues - "

" _What_ clues?"

"Poor Faith," continued Drusilla, once again dodging the question. "Not good enough for Daddy, not good enough for Buffy, not even good enough for the failed Michael Sword." She tapped the man's chin with her bloodied nails.

"You know what fills his dreams at night?" the vampire asked, a cruelly amused gleam in her wide yes. "Nasty dirty naughty things - the woman who could not bear the truth, the woman with the son, the angel he dishonored in the back of his car - but not you. Never you - pathetic, ruined, useless -"

"You talking about me or you talking about you?" said Faith, taking another step forward and wondering how this would all end. Would it be crossbow or holy water or angel fire or slow beheading with her knife? Spike would have kittens. Buffy would send her a thank-you gift certificate for a massage at that national gym chain she was obsessed with. But if she didn't get Dean and Peter out of this safely, none of that mattered.

Drusilla grinned, then sliced open a ribbon of skin across her left wrist. Blood dripped from the wound onto Dean's collarbone. The vampire leaned forward, bringing her bleeding wrist close to the hunter's mouth. "Enough of your nasty words," she scolded. "Shall we watch him eat you?"

"That's it, said Faith. "I'm done. I am so frakking done." She lifted the automatic revolver from its holster at her hip and shot a single 0.34 caliber bullet. It hit Drusilla right between the eyes, but the vampire only giggled and pressed her wound against the man's lips.

"No," growled the Slayer, and she shot off another round.

The second bullet was followed by one, two, three, four more, Faith advancing steadily as blood and skin and fragments of bone splashed into the air, until the back of the vampire's head exploded, spraying Dean and Peter in the face with brain matter. Still, Drusilla laughed, and still Faith continued walking forward. Then she sprinted the last step and ducked low to shove a fire-hardened stake of wood through the woman's diaphanous dress and corset and into her rib cage.

Drusilla froze, mid-laugh, and a look of great surprise spread across her face. Then she smiled, grabbing Faith's hand in her pale, bony one, and squeezing so tightly that bone and tendon crunched together. "Yesss," she hissed, and mixed in with the malevolent pleasure in her eyes was a glint of what might have been gratitude.

Faith jerked her hand back in disgust, and the vampire crumpled into a pile of dust overlaying Dean's body. The hunter coughed weakly, but otherwise did not move.

Blood continued to spill liberally from the bite marks on either side of his neck, soaking the ruined collar of his plaid shirt and staining the concrete floor. His eyes were half-open, half-closed, and he did not look up as she knelt down to wipe the vampire blood away from his mouth and to check his pulse. It was faint, but there.

"Spike is going to frakking kill me," she observed aloud to Castiel.

"Who?" came the faint mumble from Peter, speaking for the first time.

"Cass, can you take care of this?" Faith pointed first to the man's vampire bites with her stake and then to Peter. "Then get them back to the house. Here," she pulled Peter's spider suit out of the backpack and tossed it over towards him.

The angel nodded. He traded the Slayer places and laid his palm against Dean's forehead. The marks on his chest and neck faded from bright red to pink to white and then disappeared entirely. Although the man did not open his eyes, his breathing deepened.

Next, Castiel stepped over to Peter. He touched the chains and ropes with that same palm, and they rusted and dissolved to pieces in an instant. He placed his hand on first one shoulder and then the next, and they popped into place with a loud crack that left the teenager wincing.

"But - " spluttered Peter, his wide eyes darting from the stern angel to the grim-faced Faith to the too-silent, too-still Dean. "Is he -"

"He'll live," said Faith emotionlessly.

"What happened to you?" the teenager gasped, at last taking in the dark smudges of dirt that clung to the woman's arms and face.

"Somebody thought it would be fun to bury me alive. It wasn't. Listen to Cass. He'll get you out of here okay."

Hoisting her crossbow up to her shoulder, Faith walked through the last of Drusilla's ashes and strode up the stairs towards the main floor. She had more vampires to Slay.


	12. House Party, pt 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A/N: So... I'm expanding the fic again, just by one chapter. Chapter 14 will be the final one. Thanks for reading!

 

* * *

**August 19th, 2017, Missoula, Montana, 12:45 a.m.**

"Why aren't we going with her?" Peter asked worriedly, pulling his suit up and over his jeans and his t-shirt. There would be some chafing in some very important areas if he wore it that way for too long, but he would worry about that later. He held the cowl in his hands as Castiel stepped over to Dean and hoisted the man up off the ground to lean him across his shoulders.

"I'll return shortly," said the angel. "Remain where you are."

"Sure thing," said Peter, giving a feeble thumbs up. "You got it."

As soon as the man and angel disappeared, however, he pulled the cowl over his head. Peter rolled his newly undislocated shoulders back. Although still tired, he felt a little less woozy now that he was out of those chains and back in his suit.

Karen's voice filled his ears as he started running for the stairs. "Hello, sir. May I call Mister Stark? He has been very worried."

He barely had the breath to splutter, "In a minute," and he continued running.

By the time he got to the main living room, Faith had already emptied her crossbow quiver and thrown it down to the side. Surrounded by piles of dust, she was spraying the remaining baker's dozen of vampires with an over-powered water gun. Wherever the water touched their skin, smoke billowed and welts formed. A few vampires were scrambling for the door in a half-crouching scuttle, ducking beneath the smoke cover.

_Thwip!_ Peter sent a strand of webbing to close and lock the front door. "Wait up, guys," he called, double-webbing the door knob for good measure. "Why the rush?"

Running out of holy water, Faith hurled the plastic gun to one side, clocking the closest vampire right in the forehead. Then, stake in hand, she threw herself into the middle of the huddle of angry, fuming, steaming, screaming vampires.

"Uh, Faith?"

She ignored him, but one of the vampires hissed and broke off from the pack to advance on the teenager.

"Faith?" Peter repeated, his confident Spiderman voice jumping up a quarter-octave.

Still nothing.

Okay. Well, things were nowhere near as efficient as they could be, he thought, and so Peter began slinging synthetic webbing all over the place. One by one, he slammed each of the vampires with webs, beginning at the outside and slowly working his way into the center, where Faith was doused in ash and currently staking her fourth vampire. That left nine still remaining. Finally, the Slayer looked up and saw him.

"Outside," she said, jerking her head towards the large bay window.

"What?" asked Peter incredulously.

Faith half-walked, half-hopped over three of the bound vampires to the heavy green curtains that blocked the bay window. She tore a length of mildewed, smoke-stained fabric, wrapped it around her clenched fist, and drove her hand through the window glass, shattering it. Then she grabbed Peter around the waist and pushed, tugged, and practically tossed him out the window.

Landing on his right shoulder and rolling over onto his feet, Peter sprang back up. "What are you-?"

But Faith's intentions were quickly becoming very clear. She pulled a beer bottle out of the inside pocket of her leather jacket and removed the clear film covering the top. The Slayer flicked her lighter, ignited the dirty rag extruding from the bottle neck, and flung it inside the house with her right arm, simultaneously pushing Peter back with her left.

The ramshackle building exploded, flames reaching twenty feet into the sky. For a moment, the air was filled with screams, and then silence reigned, except for the crackling of flames licking at the weathered old wood.

"Whoa," said Peter from behind his cowl. "That was, uh, extreme."

"I like fireworks," said the Slayer with a simple shrug.

"I could see that," commented a new voice, and they whirled around.

There had been no whirring noise, no glare of light from jet propulsors, but somehow Iron Man was there. The red and gold face plate retracted up to reveal Tony Stark, the worry lines at his temples fading with relief - just as he was splashed in the face with the contents of a water bottle marked "holy," courtesy of Faith.

"Ouch," he complained, shaking his head to get the water droplets off of his nose. "What was that for?"

"Sorry," Faith apologized awkwardly. "Reflex." She really didn't like it when people succeeded in sneaking up on her.

"It's the super stealthy stealth mode," explained Tony with a self-satisfied grin. "Gets people every time." He turned to look at Peter, and some of his worry returned. "You okay, Peter?"

"Kinda nauseous, a little light-headed, think I might puke or pass out," said the teenager in a cheerful rush. "But, boy, am I glad to see you, Mister Stark."

"Likewise," said Tony.

"Did Castiel not fix the blood loss problem?" asked the Slayer, frowning.

"Wait - " Tony held up one glowing, metal hand. "Castiel the _angel_? Of _Thursdays?_ That Castiel?"

"Yep," smiled Peter. "She can call in an angel. Isn't she awesome?" He was definitely heading towards loopy, with perhaps a layover at buzzed on the way there.

"I can call in a god," mumbled the engineer.

"Where is Thor, by the way?" Faith wanted to know. "Is he still single? The internet says Jane broke up with him."

Tony raised an eyebrow. "Gold-digger much, Lehane? Whoops, I mean _god_ -digger?"

"More like abs-digger," smirked the Slayer.

"I can't blame you," Peter stuck his two cents in. "Thor is totally the hottest Avenger."

"Hey," protested Tony. "You haven't even met him, shortstop."

"At least I didn't say Captain America."

"Yeah, kid, you know you're not as funny as you think you are. Now answer the lady's question, Spiderboy."

"Spiderman."

"Did Castiel fix the blood loss?" Faith repeated.

"I don't know. I felt funny before, and I feel funny now. Slightly different kind of funny, but still funny."

Beginning to accept that there was no getting sense out of him, she turned to Iron Man. "Did you bring the stuff?"

"Yes, I brought the stuff." Tony waved one glowing hand and a shorter, silver suit, one of his Iron Legion, touched down onto the ground beside him. "The blood's inside him. Temperature-controlled thorax and all."

"Do anthropomorphoid figures truly have thoraces?" wondered Peter skeptically.

"What?" said Faith.

"What?" said Tony.

Peter snorted at them. "Plebs."

"Enough," Faith cut him off. "Did Cass get Dean out?"

"Yes, I think so. At least they vanished. Wait - shouldn't you have asked me that before you blew the place up?"

"They should be at the house, then," said Faith, ignoring the actually valid-for-once question.

"Or maybe they're at a love grotto somewhere," mused Peter with a cheesy grin. "Did you see how he looked at him?"

"Not the time, Peter."

"Sorry," he apologized. "I kinda lose my filter when the world starts swirling. Whoo - whoo - whoo - whooooooo." The Spiderteen swayed from side to side and then collapsed.

"He needs blood," concluded Faith sharply as Iron Man gathered the boy into his arms. "Supplies are at my house."

"Aye-aye," agreed Tony. "Sparky'll give you a ride." He shot into the arm.

"What?" she hollered after him.

The silver Iron Legionnaire wrapped its arms around Faith's ribcage and lifted her up, holding her close to his chest as he, too, took off.

_This - this is freaking awesome!_ thought Faith excitedly, getting a quick rush of adrenaline from the upward acceleration. She thought she had tapped out on adrenaline when she'd thrown the Molotov cocktail. Apparently not. Maybe, maybe once they'd gotten the blood problem taken care of, Stark would let her pilot this thing.

It was a ten minute flight to the house, and far too soon the Legionnaire was setting her down on the front lawn a few feet away from Tony. The engineer carefully lowered Peter onto the grass and pressed a button that made his suit fly back, compressing and shrinking into two bracelets around his wrists. He then picked the teenager back up again and carried him into the house.

"Gimme the blood," said Faith to the Legionnaire, poking him repeatedly in the chest. "Blood. Now."

The chest plate on the suit slid open to reveal a small blue Igloo cooler.

"Bingo."

She lugged the cooler inside and set it with a loud thud onto the living room coffee table. Tony was depositing Peter into an armchair, and Dean was sprawled out along the couch, his head propped up on a pile of pillows and the arm of the sofa. Castiel stood at the entry to the kitchen, an open bottle of Wild Turkey in his hands. He handed the bourbon to the hunter, who, while still pale, was at last awake.

"You look like crap," Dean said to Faith while the German Shepherd darted back and forth between the La-Z-Boy and the sofa, whining and tangling himself up in everyone's feet.

"You look worse," she retorted, watching with interest as Tony pulled the cowl off of Peter's head and tapped on the spider in the center of his chest. The suit became incredibly loose, and he began to wrestle the kid out of it.

"No," whined Peter, pushing him away. Reggie barked in warning.

"Reg, out," commanded Faith, and the dog reluctantly abandoned Peter to follow her summons to the back door.

"Hold still," Tony ordered a still-wriggling Peter.

"Uh. uh. Gimme five more minutes, Mom."

The teenager's eyes shot wide open in horror. "Oh, no."

"Oh, yes," said Dean, taking a long swig from the bottle. "This is better than cable."

The back door closed with a quiet snick, and the Slayer re-entered the room. "You gave him bourbon?" she asked Castiel quietly, but not quietly enough. Everyone, including the non-hearing enhanced, heard her. Undaunted, Faith continued, "He needs blood."

Frowning, the angel said, "You have made your position on healing clear. If he dies, I am allowed to resurrect him. Otherwise, as you have so repeatedly stated, the responsibility is yours."

"I said that _once,_ " snapped the woman. "Under very specific circumstances." She shook her head and stepped away. "I'm getting the IV stuff."

"You need a hand?" asked Peter, who was awkwardly dodging eye contact with Mister Stark and could really use an excuse to get out of the room.

"You just called Stark 'mom,'" the Slayer pointed out. "I think you'd better stay put."

"That was one time!" he called after her feebly. "One time!"

"Thus far," said Castiel in a dry voice.

"Et tu, Cass-ay?" The teenager collapsed back in his arm chair dramatically, a hand clasping an imaginary stab wound in his gut.

"So," said Tony once Faith had left the room. "What was that all about?"

"The internet was right," breathed Peter, who had finally recovered from his case of the theatrics.

"What?" barked Dean.

"What?" echoed Castiel.

"Uh oh," said Tony.

"Nothing," mumbled Peter.

Choosing to ignore the last ten seconds, the engineer went on, "Didn't realize there was a Human Resources issue here."

"There's not," said Dean at the same time that the angel snorted and Faith replied, "There is," re-entering the room with a small navy duffel over one shoulder, two quarterstaffs in one hand, and a pair of mop buckets in the other.

Dean glowered at the Slayer accusingly. "I thought you two worked it all out," he complained as she planted one bucket beside the couch and another next to the La-z-Boy. "You _told_ me things were fine."

Peter and Tony's heads bounced back and forth like spectators at some weird three-way tennis match.

"They were," admitted Faith begrudgingly. She set a quarterstaff in each bucket, stabilizing it and keeping it upright with a few books from the bottom shelf of the coffee table and a handful of Reggie's chew toys. "That was before he walked in on -"

"To paraphrase you, that was _once_ ," interrupted Castiel.

"He what?" Peter was not following.

Faith opened the cooler, withdrew two units of O-negative, and secured them to the tops of the quarterstaves with a roll of duct tape from inside her duffle bag. Satisfied with her work, she turned to glare at the angel. "You did it _twice_."

"Dean sounded in pain," said Castiel defensively.

The Slayer pulled out a plastic bag with IV supplies and donned a pair of hospital gloves. Kneeling on the floor beside Dean, she wrapped a tourniquet around his upper arm with quick precision, tapped along the inside of his elbow to find a vein, and then ripped open an alcohol wipe before sanitizing the area in small, concentric circles. She removed an IV catheter from its packaging and flushed it with a sterile saline syringe.

"If that's what you think pain sounds like, you're even more of a prude than I thought you were," Faith retorted as she flushed a small piece of connecter tubing with the sterile saline. "That wasn't what pain sounds like." She lined the tip of her needle up with the vein and pushed in. " _This_ is."

"Son of a bit-" swore Dean, flinching. He had not been prepared for that.

Faith clamped her free hand over his mouth, and at the same time, Tony clamped his hands down over Peter's ears.

"Watch it, Winchester. There are children present," snarked the Slayer, removing her hand.

"Hang on," said Peter, pushing the man's hands away and putting two and two together. "So you guys were - oh."

"I _did_ tell you to knock," the hunter said ruefully to Castiel while Faith taped the IV into place and hooked it up to even more tubing and then to the unit of blood.

The angel frowned, but said nothing.

Faith retrieved another IV starter packet from her duffle and eyed Peter consideringly. "Your turn, Sundance Kid."

"I don't - I don't like needles," protested the teenager. "Can't we just -"

"No." said all three adults and the angel in unison. Castiel said it politely but firmly. The others just yelled.

"Come on, Faith," Peter plead as she repeated the same series of steps that she had just done with Dean: gloves, tourniquet, vein finding, cleansing with alcohol. "Please don't do this. You don't have to do this - OW!"

"There," said Faith, once the IV was secured and attached to a unit of blood. She rose to her feet and tossed the trash into a wastebasket near the television stand. "I'm gonna go take a shower. Castiel, please don't follow me."

Mortally offended, the angel defended himself, "I would never -"

Faith flipped him the bird as she walked away. There was a gentle click as she opened the back door, and then a four-legged scramble as Reggie accompanied her upstairs.

'"You shouldn't let her rile you," remarked Dean when the sound of footsteps ascending the stairs had faded.

Now the tennis match was down to two.

"Dean, she intentionally does her worst to provoke me -"

"Dude, you did walk in on us. _Twice._ Even after she ripped you a new one the first time, you did it again."

"There was an emergency," explained Castiel.

"Ain't there always?" asked Dean rhetorically. "Anyway, I'm pretty sure that's why she's pissed at you."

"More so than usual."

"Yeah, more so than usual," the hunter admitted. "Just, try not to walk into her room or my room without knocking, okay?"

"I tried knocking. No one answered. You just kept screaming."

Tony covered Peter's ears again.

The hunter flushed an awkward color of scarlet. "I was not - I was not screaming, okay?"

"Try a thunderbolt to get their attention next time?" suggested Tony loudly. He could only cover the teenager's ears for so long, and he suspected that it wasn't really working, anyway. "Like that loud-noise, breaking-glass thing you did when you first appeared to Dean?"

Castiel looked at him quizzically.

"He's read the books," explained Dean.

"Oh." The angel nodded.

Judging that it was safe to remove his hands, Tony did so.

"Thank you, Cass," said Dean after a long moment of silence. "Thanks for coming to get me."

"You were in trouble. Of course I came," replied Castiel. "I will always come."

The man and the angel stared at one another intently for another long, slow, moment. Peter wished for his phone. Ned would _kill_ him for not surreptitiously recording this.

Tony cleared his throat. "You all need the room?"

"No," said Castiel, turning his head to look at him. "I must return to Heaven. There is much to be done there."

"Thank you," repeated Dean.

There was a rush of wind, a heavy beating of wings, and the angel vanished.

"So . . ." said Tony in the quiet that followed. "The internet's kinda smart for once, huh?"

Dean leaned his head back against his pillow mountain and took another long drink of the Wild Turkey. "Tony?"

"Yes, dear?"

"Shut up."

To everyone's shock, Tony actually managed to be silent for about five minutes, and then he said, "Hey, where's your brother?"

Dean swore again.

The engineer raised his eyebrows. "Seriously?" he remarked mildly. "You didn't even give me time to cover the sensitive ears of Little Britches here."

Peter frowned. "I'm not -"

"Gimme your phone," ordered Dean, not bothering to apologize.

"Fine," exhaled Tony. He passed his cellphone to the hunter, who punched in Sam's ten-digit number almost frantically.

"Hey," he said gruffly after several seconds of the call ringing out. "It's me."

There was a pause, and then Dean continued, "Yeah, yeah, Sammy, I'm fine. Got the crap beat out of me - carved out of me? - by a vamp, but now I'm okay. Faith and Cass came to get me . . . Why the hell are you laughing? . . . No, they didn't kill each other . . . Seriously, Sam, cut that crap out. How's Livvy?"

A long stretch of silence was followed by, "Oh, good. Home tomorrow? That's great, Sam. Yeah, of course. Faith an' I'll go over first thing and vamp-proof your place. She keeps like six or seven emergency kits for just that."

The hunter chuckled. "Okay, maybe we're both more than a little paranoid. After tonight, can you blame us? . . . Uh huh . . . Uh huh. Sorry, Caroline, I'll let y'all get some sleep."

Hanging up the cell phone, he tossed it back to Tony, who was had dragged in a wobbly chair from the kitchen and was straddling it backwards, leaning his elbows and his upper body against the chair's ladder-back.

"Thanks." The billionaire caught it in one hand and slipped it into his pants pocket. He was wearing some kind of fancy athlesiure sweat pants that Dean instinctively knew had to cost ridiculous amounts of money, likely in the triple or quadruple digits.

Peter pushed himself up against the upholstery of the La-Z-Boy. "How's Olivia?" he asked worriedly. "I'm so - Dean, you've gotta know - I'm so, so sorry about letting Drusilla in. I didn't - I would never - I'm - that is -"

"It's not your fault," said Dean. "We should've had, I don't know, like a whole Ten Least Wanted monster and vamp and angel and demon and jerk wall up in the library and drilled you on them. Guess we can start that tomorrow."

"Kinda like the wall the FBI had with you two and your brother on it?" Tony commented in an innocent voice.

"Yeah," admitted Dean. "I guess kinda like that."

Smirking, Tony took that as a win. He stood up and swung his leg off over the side of his chair. "Bathroom?"

The hunter jerked his thumb towards the library and the back of the house. "Halfway down the hall."

"Thanks."

Once the billionaire had left the room, Peter waited until he heard the bathroom door open and close before saying, "Dean?"

Lowering the bottle of Wild Turkey to get a better look at the kid's face, Dean replied, "Yeah, Pete?"

"I thought you were dead," he said quietly. "Before - before Faith showed up. I really - I mean - you stopped moving."

The hunter attempted to smile reassuringly, but it came out as more of an uncomfortable grimace. "Takes more than that to get me, kid. Look, why don't you call your aunt? Tell her you're doing fine, talk about back-to-school shopping, all that kind of thing?"

"It's like four a.m. in New York."

"Right," said Dean, and he took yet another drink of bourbon. "Movie, then?"

"Do I get to pick?" asked Peter in a sly tone.

Footsteps softly padded down the stairs, and then there was a quiet snort as Faith walked back into the living room, the German Shepherd at her heels. "Sure, kid," she said kindly. The Slayer eyed the draining bags of blood, which were still at least a good third of the way full, and then she took the remaining three units of O-negative out of the Igloo cooler and put them into the fridge.

Returning, she pointed her chin in Dean's direction. "Make room, Winchester."

With a half-hearted grumble, the hunter pushed himself up from his pillow mountain into a sitting position. He groaned as the blood rushed down from his head.

"Don't be a baby." Faith rolled her eyes and jumped over the back of the couch. She stretched her legs out onto the coffee table before rearranging the pillows and pulling the man's head and shoulders back into her lap. Reggie hopped up onto the opposite end of the sofa and curled himself onto a ball on top of the man's legs.

Dean reached up, grabbed Faith's left hand, and tugged it down onto his chest. "Cass fixed the scars."

"Huh." The Slayer reclaimed her hand, snatching up the bottle of Wild Turkey and taking a large, fiery gulp. "Guess he is good for something, then."

"You need to stop that. No, not that." The hunter pushed his head back against her other hand, which was slowly carding through his short hair, her nails scratching against his scalp. "Keep doing that. Stop this whole drama queen thing against Cass. He apologized, you know."

Faith lowered the bourbon just long enough to counter, "I'm a frigging Vampire Slayer. I do what I want."

"Guys?" protested Peter.

"Yeah, well, just so you know, the next time something nasty comes after me, I'm sending it your way," groaned Dean. "You owe me for this one."

The Slayer shook her head. "Nope." She swallowed loudly. "That's the blood loss talking."

"Guys?" Peter repeated himself. "How are we supposed to put a movie in?" He made a show of glancing around at his and Dean's makeshift IV poles.

"Tony," said Dean instantly. "Tony'll do it."

"TONY!" hollered Faith without any warning. Dean swore and attempted to cover her mouth with one hand. Still the Slayer managed to yell a muffled,"TOOOOEE! KNEEEE!"

A door banged shut in the hallway, and the engineer came skittering back into the living room, sliding a few feet across the wooden floor in his socks.

"What?" he asked breathlessly as he dried his hands on his pants. "What is it?"

"Can you put a movie in?" requested Faith, pushing Dean's arm down with the bottle of Wild Turkey.

Crouching down beside the ancient VCR and the nearly-as ancient DVD player, Tony squinted at the loose box full of tapes and discs. "What do you want?"

"Indiana Jones?" suggested Peter.

Tony shrugged. "Works for me." He pulled the tape out of its box and shoved it into the VCR. After automatically rewinding it all the way to the stopping point, he stood and handed the television and VCR remotes to Faith. "Milady."

The Slayer grinned. "Thanks. Since I'm kinda stuck here, would you mind throwing some popcorn in the microwave? I think there's a whole box of movie-butter flavor in the top cabinet over the fridge."

"Okay."

"Speaking of the fridge, grab some beers out of there while you're at it?" added Dean. "And, uh," he looked over at Peter, "a Dr. Pepper for the kid."

"What happened to the no-caffeine-after-midnight rule?" the teenager wondered, his eyes wide in anticipation and disbelief.

"Frak the rules," Faith declared with a grand wave of the bourbon.

The hunter tugged it out of her grip. "Gimme that. You heard the boss lady," he told both Peter and Tony. "Frak the rules."

Half-amused in spite of himself, Tony walked into the kitchen and began rifling through the cabinets in search of the popcorn as Peter suggested hopefully, "Indiana Jones movie _marathon_?"

"Frak the rules," repeated the Slayer, sounding far more cheerful than she had prior to her shower. Tony figured that it was probably the alcohol. God knew that he wouldn't have minded a little bit himself at the moment - but, no, he'd been dry for too long, and besides, he'd promised Pepper.

From the living room, Peter continued to wheedle for even more elaborate allowances. "Can we order a pizza?"

"It's almost two a.m.," Dean countered. "No pizza place in this town delivers this late."

"Oh." The kid's disappointment was audible. "What about - uh - could we order burgers? Burger King's like always open, and Uber delivers!"

Tearing the plastic wrapping off of one popcorn bag, Tony grinned. It was impossible not to appreciate the kid's ingenuity and optimism. He stuck the first bag of popcorn into the microwave and unwrapped another.

"That depends," said Faith dryly.

"On?"

"You still have Stark's credit card number memorized?"

This was not so amusing. His head and upper body halfway in the depths of the fridge, Tony frowned when he heard Peter answer, "Ye-es?"

"Go to town, kid," declared Dean. "You know why?"

"Because frak the rules?" Peter guessed.

"Exactly."

Two beers and two Dr. Peppers in hand, Tony poked his head back into the living room. "Hey," he protested mildly. "Two things. Wait, no, maybe three." He set the beers on the coffee table near Faith's feet and carried the sodas across the room. "One, Peter, I'm a little disappointed in you. If you're going to use my credit card for unauthorized stuff, at least make it a little more interesting."

"Pizza's interesting!" argued Peter.

"No, Pete, it's not. Two, Burger King? Seriously?"

Dean interjected, "It's practically the only twenty-four hour joint in town."

"Okay, that makes this four things. Three, you should maybe have looked into that before you let hunter and Slayer WITSEC move you here."

"We _chose_ to move here," Dean reminded him.

"Well, technically, Sam chose to move here, and you wanted to be closer to him," mumbled Faith. She earned herself a glowering stare and an elbow to the kneecap for her efforts.

Tony waved this away. "Whatever. Four - and this is by far the most important one - you should never let something as plebeian as restaurant closing times keep you from good pizza." He popped the top on his Dr. Pepper, took a long drink of burning acid and carbonation and prune juice, then grimaced and said, "If you want pizza, Peter, then we're getting pizza. What kind?"

"Uh, I get to choose?"

"Unless you decide to take forever, then sure, yeah, you get to choose."

The teenager's forehead furrowed as he thought, and he scratched automatically at the itchy tape near his IV site. "We could - no - wait - I mean, what about pepperoni - I like pepperoni, but not everyone does - last time we had some, Dean complained about it getting stuck in his teeth - so maybe we should - but only Faith likes pineapple - uh, uh, uh…." His stream of consciousness monologue faded into silence as he got thoroughly lost in decision making.

After a thirty straight seconds of quiet, Dean lost his patience and started singing a made-up song, "Spider-, Spiderman, what's the plan? We're kind of on a deadline."

"Come on, SpiderMan," joined in Faith. "We're all huge fans, but now I'm really starving."

The parodied song was enough to break Peter out of his take-out reverie. "Scooby-Doo?" he demanded. "Really?"

Faith and Dean shrugged in sync. "I'm starving," the hunter defended himself.

"Oh, right," said Tony as the microwave beeped its third reminder in the last five minutes. "The popcorn. Hang on." He disappeared back into the kitchen and returned with two bowls of fluffy snacks. The engineer set one in Peter's lap and handed the other to Faith. "You make up your mind yet, Peter?"

"Something with meat and something with cheese?" the teenager suggested weakly.

Dean rolled his eyes. "Pepperoni's fine. Or whatever they have that's meat-lovers or six gajillion cheeses. Boston over here gets lactose withdrawals if she doesn't eat enough cheese."

"At least my digestive tract can handle it," the Slayer retorted. "Unlike your brother -"

"Stop." Dean held a hand up in front of her face. "We all know that Sam gets toxic with too much dairy. You don't need to remind me."

"He really does," Peter agreed. "Like, post-nuclear apocalypse toxic. Which, to be honest, was kind of shocking. Edlund never mentioned that the Winchesters were gassy. Like stun a water buffalo at thirty pages gassy."

"Peter?"

"Yeah?"

"Can it."

"Sorry, Dean."

"So - Tony - how exactly is this pizza getting here? You're not flying it in or something, are you?"

Stepping out into the entryway, the engineer paused, lowered his phone from his ear, and grinned. "Not flying it in, no."

"So?"

"This'll be better - and faster. Trust me."

Faith grumbled something under her breath about having trust issues, but made no further protests. Instead, she sank deeper into the upholstery of the beat-up couch and chugged steadily from her beer. When Stark came back from making his mysterious phone call, she directed him in how to switch over the empty bags of red blood cells for fresh ones. Momentarily disconnected from his tubing, Peter leapt out of his chair and raced into the kitchen, returning with a box of Hostess snacks that the Slayer now realized to her great chagrin had not been properly hidden.

"Brownie?" offered the teenager through a mouthful of chocolate and cake, the glue-like icing already smeared across his chin.

"Transfusion," said Faith pointedly.

Shoulders slumped, Peter tromped to the La-Z-Boy and allowed Tony to hook him up to the second unit of blood. On his way, he tossed the brownies into Dean's lap. The hunter did not so much as blink.

"I don't know why I need this," the teenager complained, wincing as the blood started running through the tubing. "It _tingles_. And Castiel fixed my shoulders. I'm fine."

Dean opened heavy-lidded eyes and gave him a disapproving stare. "Don't argue," he said gruffly. "You can always use the extra hemoglobin."

"Unless you're scheduled to compete in any professional sports events," added Tony, straddling the wooden chair again. He rested his elbows against the ladder-back and bit into a brownie covered with little multi-colored candies. He gestured to the remote in Faith's hands. "Shall we?"

The insubordination settled, Dean let his eyes fall shut again. He listened to the opening dialogue of _Raiders of the Lost Ark_ and slowly began to drift off. The comedown from playing the night's torture victim, combined with the exhaustion of angel healing, too much alcohol, and the soothing, repetitive motion of Faith's fingers through his hair, was gradually making it impossible for him to form a coherent thought, much less focus on the film or talk.

He fell deeper and deeper into a twilit sleep, only truly waking when three troubling things happened simultaneously: a loud, whooshing sound filled the room, Peter yelled, "Holy crap!", and the lap beneath his head nearly dumped him onto the floor.

"I'm up!" Dean jerked upright, almost smacking his forehead on the Slayer's chin on his way up.

A large circle of sizzling and glowing orange _something_ had appeared on the opposite side of the coffee table, blocking his view of the television screen. In the center of the orange circle, the television that should have been on the other side was replaced by a dark room with a wooden table, a large evergreen book bound in leather, and the head and shoulders of an extremely grumpy-looking man. His face was lined with exhaustion, there were flecks of gray in the temples of his dark hair, and he was wearing ratty navy scrubs and an ancient maroon blanket wrapped around his shoulders.

"That's what he said," snickered Faith in response to Dean's earlier comment once a moment of awkward silence had passed and she was relatively certain that this newcomer wasn't going to attack them through the portal.

Tony rose from his chair, grinning widely and wiping brownie crumbs off of his trousers onto the floor. "Evening, Strange. Or should I say, 'good morning'?"

The strange man frowned and closed the front cover of his heavy book. "Stark," he said sourly, managing to convey a sheer metric ton of disapproval in the one, single word. "You said you had an emergency."

"Yeah, I did." Tony checked his watch. "It'll be critical in about, oh, sixty seconds or so. We still have time for introductions."

"Fine," said the man, and the lines across his forehead deepened. Dean was impressed - this stranger's bitch face made Sam's look pitiful by comparison. "I'll go first, then, shall I?"

Tony made an open-handed gesture for him to help himself. "Be my guest."

When the man next spoke, it was through gritted teeth. "My name is Doctor Stephen Strange." His diction was perfect, his enunciation crisp as a morning frost, and his glare would have turned lesser mortals to stone. "I am the Sorcerer Supreme of this universe. You are Tony Stark, also known as Iron Man, also known as a giant pain in my ass. Who are your friends?"

"I'm, uh, Peter Parker," mumbled Peter. "Super normal, never does anything weird, definitely not been bitten by a radioactive spider or anything . . ."

Strange jerked a thumb in the direction of the recliner. "Spiderman's a _kid_ , Stark?"

"Technically I didn't recruit him into any of this. He was already doing spider stuff when I found him," the engineer rattled off at warp speed, as if he had practiced this spiel multiple times already.

"Great. That's just . . . wow." Strange's mouth grew comical wide on the 'ow'. "And who's this?" He nodded at Faith and Dean. "Angry Insect Man and Arachnid Lady?"

"Name's Faith. Faith the Vampire Slayer," said the woman coolly. "This's Dean. He stopped the Apocalypse."

"Which one?" countered Strange in an equally chilly voice.

Dean set his jaw into a harsh, ugly line. "May twenty-ten," he replied, his tone frigid. "You might not remember, but -"

"But that was when the archangels Michael and Lucifer were fated to end the world - I _have_ done my reading, you know," said Strange, no longer sounding quite so prickly. "The Winchesters - you were on a lot of people's radar back in the day. Still are, actually, now that I think about it. So this is where you retired." He actually leaned forward, sticking his head through the glowing orange circle to peer around the living room. "How quaint."

"It ain't quaint," Faith corrected him. "It's shabby."

"I was being polite."

"Why start now?" muttered Tony, gazing up at the ceiling.

"I - " Strange began heatedly, then he stopped. "My doorbell is ringing," said the Sorcerer Supreme with another frown. "It is four-thirty in the morning, and my doorbell is ringing. Stark - "

"You'd better go and check that out, don't you think?" suggested Tony innocently.

Grumbling, the man rose from his chair and walked out of sight. As he left, Dean noted that the maroon blanket was not in fact a blanket but was actually a cloak. Weird fashion choice, he reflected. But then again, the guy was the Sorcerer Supreme - whatever the hell that meant.

A minute or so later, Strange returned. Instead of resuming his seat, he walked directly in front of the portal. In his arms were two grease-stained pizza boxes.

"Stark," he said in a sickly sweet voice that warned of dangers to come. "Your emergency wouldn't happen to be a pizza delivery, would it?"

Tony finally glanced down from the ceiling only to look at the floor. "Yep," he said cheerfully. "That would be about it."

"This is - " Strange exhaled heavily through his nose. Then he took a step forward, moving through the portal. He stepped out onto the worn floorboards, dropped the pizza boxes on the coffee table, and said to Tony, "I would like to kill you."

"But you won't," said the engineer triumphantly. "Because then you'd get in trouble with the Accords."

"Why did I ever sign that damn thing?" the man asked himself rhetorically as the pizzas were instantly attacked by the other four people.

"'Cause you had no choice once your ex went on a date with the wrong congressman, and you were exposed."

Strange winced. "Stark, could you please do me a favor and stop talking?"

There came a round of snorting laughter from the couch, and Strange spun on the heels of his beat-up tennis shoes to frown at the Vampire Slayer and the Winchester who appeared to have been taken by a fit of the giggles.

"What is it?" he demanded shortly.

"This is it. I've cracked. I'm finally goin' crazy," Dean half-laughed, half-sobbed, wiping pepperoni grease off of his chin. "There's a wizard threatening Iron Man in my living room."

The wizard in question sighed with exasperation. "I am not a wizard," he explained, looking as though he'd just been forced to eat a lemon whole, peel and all. "I am the Sorcerer Supreme."

"Nope. You're a wizard. Angry little wizard," Faith chuckled.

"That's not . . . I'm six-foot . . . Are they high?" Stephen inquired with a raised eyebrow, staring at Tony.

The billionaire shrugged and reached for a second slice of pizza. "I don't think so? Peter would be filming it if they were."

His mouth filled with sausage, Peter still managed to convey his agreement via a thumbs up.

Ignoring him, Strange turned to the giggling goofballs on the couch. "Did you take anything?" the former neurosurgeon asked Faith and Dean, his fingers twitching towards the phone in his scrub pants pocket. He fought the urge to turn the flashlight on and check their pupils.

"Bourbon," said Dean.

"Ativan," added Faith. When everyone stared at her, she explained, "Popped a couple before I got in the shower. What, did y'all miss the 'got buried alive' bit or something?"

"And -" Dean drew the others' attention back to himself, "there were some brownies."

"Not like the edible ones," the Slayer clarified. "I mean, they were edible, but not like _edible_ -edible, if you know what I mean, Wiz-man. More like the comic ones."

"Cosmic," Peter corrected in a half-whisper, also tempted to reach for his cell phone - for completely different reasons than the Sorcerer Supreme, of course.

"Yeah, that's what I said." Faith blinked. "Did you say your name was Strange?"

"Yes," said Stephen briskly. "Doctor Stephen Strange. Sorcerer Supreme."

"Ohhhh, _Doctor_ Strange. I thought that sounded familiar. You know Oz?"

"The mythical land from the children's book?"

"No, Oz - Daniel Osborne. He's a werewolf. He said something about meeting a weird doctor wizard guy on his last trip to Tibet."

"Ah, yes." He had a somewhat vague idea of which person the woman was referring to, but in the interest of time and extricating himself from this bizarre situation, Stephen decided feign more recognition than he felt. "He was very, er, nice. I, er - I need to go. I have - I have an important meeting in London."

"With the cheekbone polishing society?" snarked Faith.

The sorcerer could feel the tips of his ears reddening. He glowered. "Stark, you will owe me for this."

"Promises, promises, Stephen," trilled Tony Stark. "You're always such a tease."

"I have more than half a mind to throw that pizza at you," Stephen remarked sourly. "You would deserve it."

"DON'T!" pled the other three as one.

"Fine. Just, at least - promise me no more alcohol for those two," said Stephen, nodding towards Dean and Faith. "Or drugs. You hear me, Tony Stark?"

"Sure thing, Doc. Strictly a teetotaler night for everyone from here on out." Tony gave a big wink that convinced absolutely no one.

"Hey, Doc," called Dean as the man turned to leave. "Could we have more pizza?"

"Please!" echoed Peter.

"Yes, please!" Faith added her voice to the cacophony.

Stephen turned back to stare at them, letting out a long breath through pursed lips. "That would be a gross misuse of magic," he pointed out.

"Pleeeaasee!"

"A _gross_ misuse."

"Please?" Peter was not too proud to beg. "You'd be the best wizard ever!"

"I am the Sorcerer Supreme. I am _not_ a wizard."

"Pleaaaassseeee."

Sensing his inevitable defeat, Stephen sighed. "Fine. What do you want? More pepperoni or sausage?"

"Supreme!" yelled Dean and Peter in unison, and then they both dissolved into a fit of cackling and snorting.

"I really, _really_ should have seen that coming," grumbled Strange to himself.

"Yeah," agreed Tony, who was struggling to be the only person holding on to his dignity. "You really should have."

"I hate you all," declared the sorcerer, but he performed a series of complicated hand movements, and the number of pizza boxes doubled with another flash of orange light.

"We love you too, Wizard Man!" called out Faith, and she blew him a kiss.

Grimacing, Stephen stepped back through his portal. "There will be consequences for this, Stark," he warned darkly, and with a soft _pop_! the circle of orange fire closed shut.

"Looking forward to it," said Tony, still grinning with pride. He had had yet another brilliant idea, and yet again it had worked out brilliantly. "Well." He turned to the others. "Who's ready for their next slice of pizza?"


	13. House Party, pt 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oops. My apologies for the double update tonight - I intended to post this last week, but life got ahead of me. Posting two chapters to align with the cross-posting on FF.net.

 

* * *

**August 19th, 2017, Missoula, Montana, 3:00 a.m**

Following the departure of Stephen Strange, the movie marathon and endless eating continued. Eventually, Indiana Jones morphed into Hocus Pocus, which morphed into reruns of Brooklyn Nine Nine. After the fourth episode, Faith passed out, slumped against the arm of the couch, her left hand draped over Dean's chest, equal measures of possessive and protective even in her sleep. Tony was next to go, and he slid halfway off the couch, his torso and neck contorting in a way that made Peter cringe in sympathetic pain just to look at it. Dean feel asleep third, still sprawled along the length of the couch, his ankles propping up Tony's neck, his right hand reaching up so that his fingers closed over Faith's.

Peter eased himself out of the recliner, grabbed his tenth piece of lukewarm supreme pizza, and took a picture with his Stark phone, grateful that he'd remembered to turn it on silent. The last thing that he wanted to do was wake any of the adults asleep in front of him. Tonight - yesterday - had been way, way, way too much, and he wanted them to have a chance to recuperate.

The teenager carried his pizza back to the armchair and shifted Reggie to the side so that his narrow hips fit between the dog and the right arm of the La-Z-Boy. It did not take him long to decide that he would send the photo to Ned later - maybe much later. Peter was a bit too tired to deal with the machine gun fire of exclamation points and questions that would follow.

Drowsy, he munched on his pizza, grinned at this three favorite adults (aside from Aunt May), and turned the volume up on the television. This show was the stuff! – although he didn't think MJ would appreciate his mental comparisons of her to Rosa. Still, there was something inherently goals about Captain Hoult and Terry - beyond just the pec dancing thing - and Peter needed to learn as many of their secrets as he could before the Brooklyn Nine Nine marathon ended on TBS.

* * *

**10:00 a.m.**

"Oh, G-d. I'm gonna die."

"Why did I - ?"

"Too much pizza."

"Too much brownies."

"Too many angles." This last moan came from Tony Stark, who was rubbing his neck and wincing.

One by one, they reluctantly hoofed it back to the showers. Hot water and raw eggs and too many cans of seltzer later, slightly less grungy versions of themselves piled back onto the couch and into the recliner with migraines and some slight variations in position. Peter was forced to put webbing over his mouth after Dean and Faith deemed him guilty of talking too loudly (above a whisper). They watched more and more of Brooklyn Nine Nine, until almost everyone was loopy and halfway along the route to passing out again.

"No!" said Faith sharply, thumping herself in the forehead with a closed fist. "No sleep," she told herself in a firm voice. "No sleeping."

"Why?" wondered Tony, sprawled out in the La-Z-Boy. He yawned so widely that his jaw cracked and Dean grimaced.

"Be. Cause," the Slayer explained last night, drawing the one word out into two, "when I passed out last night, I dreamt that when Drusilla bit Peter, she got all of his spider-powers."

"Spider-silla?" It was Tony's turn to grimace and shudder. "Eugh. Let's not do that."

"Is that on the sheet?" Dean asked Faith.

She shook her head. "I don't think that's on the sheet."

"Yeah, well," the hunter rubbed a hand across his bleary eyes, "we should put that on the sheet."

"I'll go get the sheets!" Peter scurried upstairs, leaping over a confused Reginald on his way to the staircase.

"Hang on." Tony held his hands up. "I am completely and utterly lost here. _What_ sheets?"

Dean glanced at him curiously. "I told you about them."

"Told me about what?"

"Bad dreams bingo," Faith filled in the blanks for him. "It started off as a joke one night . . . and then it ended up, like, the opposite of a joke, I guess. Everybody gets super competitive about it around here. Although to be honest, I think we're all in it just to beat Sam."

"He's not the only one who's spent time in Hell," grumbled Dean under his breath. "A month in the cage with Lucifer - _please_. Try forty years with Alastair."

Reggie yelped as Peter tripped over him in his race to get back to the couch. The teenager half-flipped, half-flopped over the arm of the sofa, three crumpled sheets of paper and three markers in hand. "I got the sheets!"

Frowning in contemplation, Faith and Dean each took a piece of paper from him. They scanned the carefully printed squares, but no one had made any further progress since their last session.

"Hey, can I try one?" asked Tony, getting up from the recliner long enough to peer over Peter's shoulder at his sheet. The squares were filled with items such as _Eaten Alive; Turned into Vampire; Murdered by Best Friend; Dumped by Crush; Accidentally Started the Apocalypse - Again; Betrayed by Family; Attacked by Killer Tomatoes._

Faith shrugged. "Sure." She shoved Dean's feet off of her lap and trotted into the kitchen. Drawers banged as she searched for a blank sheet of paper. Then she stared intently at all three of the half-filled bad dreams sheets and took a column from each one in order to create Tony's.

She passed him the paper. "Here you go."

"Thanks." Tony retrieved an abandoned marker from the coffee table and perused his sheet. "Hmm." He uncapped the marker. "Uh, that would be a yep . . . and . . . yep . . . and . . . hang on – BINGO!"

"Seriously?" griped Faith, instantly regretting having made the bingo card for him. "You win on day one?"

"Respect," said Dean, less peeved. Honestly, Sam had been defeated, and that was really all that mattered to him. "You want the Skittles or the Ambien?"

"I'll have the skittles," said Tony firmly. "My prescription drug abuse days are thankfully behind me."

"Suit yourself," said Faith with an easy smile, her gripes abandoned by the wayside. She nipped back into the kitchen and returned with a bag of skittles from the cabinet above the fridge, which she tossed to Tony. "Remember, Peter. Do –"

"As you say, not as you do." Peter rolled his eyes with the long-suffering exasperation of a teenager surrounded by old people. "I got it."

"Exactly." Dean gave him a nod of approval. "Good boy."

Reggie's tail started wagging, and he ran up to Dean, looking for pats and possibly a snack.

"Not you, you useless sack of bones," said the hunter without heat, scratching behind the dog's ears. "You let a vampire get the jump on me last night."

When they finally weaned themselves from the TV and the naps, Dean offered to take Tony and Peter to the garage. His boss had a small project for him to work on – did they want to come? Peter was excited, Tony was mildly interested, and Faith turned him down. Someone needed to take the dog for a run, and she still had to go vamp-proof Sam's house and make a call to the U.K.

After waiting for the other two to reach the Impala, the hunter asked, "You sure you're gonna be okay?"

Faith knew exactly what he was referencing: the phone call to Spike that she had been putting off for nearly thirteen hours now. While she appreciated his concern, it was rather excessive. She was a big girl, and she could take care of herself. Sometimes, she wished he would do a better job of remembering that. "Yes, Dean," she said with certainty. "I'll be fine."

"Okay."

Folding her arms over her stomach, the woman squinted against the early afternoon sun. "They're watching us," she observed with a nod towards Tony and Peter, who were standing patiently on the passenger's side of the Chevy.

"Think they're waiting for me."

"Nuh-uh." She frowned. The lazy grin on Tony's face was far too smirk-like for that to be the answer. Besides, Peter's side-to-side bounce on the balls of his feet signaled high anticipation. Either that, or he really, _really_ needed to use the bathroom. "Looks to me like they're waiting for a show."

Dean glanced at Iron Man and the Spiderling out of the corner of his eye. "You're not wrong," he agreed quietly. "Should we give them one?"

The Slayer shrugged. It had been a long twenty-four hours - Hell, it had been a long summer - and it would be nice to have a moment to let off steam that she didn't have to actively hide from the teenager, the dog, or whatever heavenly beings that decided to wander into her bedroom. She tugged the ponytail holder free from her brown hair and ran a hand through the loose waves. "Horny newlyweds or first post-break up booty call?" she inquired innocently.

Instead of answering, Dean put his hands on her shoulders, walking her back against one of the porch pillars, its whitewashed plaster cracking in the summer heat. Faith raised her hands in a pretense of pushing him off, and the hunter caught her wrists and pinned them to the pillar overhead with one hand. With the other, he grabbed the side of her hip and pulled her into him as he tipped his head down to kiss her.

Within a few seconds, the Slayer jerked her hands free, sliding one underneath Dean's shirt, pulling his neck down to bring him even closer to her. Their bodies were touching in every place possible while still keeping their clothes on. After a long minute during which Dean nearly forgot how to breathe, they broke apart, and Faith gave the hunter a push off the front stoop.

There came scattered applause from the driveway.

"Well, that was something," said Tony Stark, peering over the rim of his sunglasses and clapping slowly. "Didn't take you for that much of an exhibitionist, Winchester."

Dean merely smirked.

"Just giving him a little something to remember me by," said Faith.

"Title of your sex tape!" blurted Peter, finally managing to close his gaping mouth just in time to open it back up again and stick his foot down in it.

The Slayer shook her head, world-weary. "You hope they'll grow up to be a Terry or a Santiago, but then all you get is a Peter Peralta."

"I'm very disappointed in you," added Tony with mock gravity. He frowned at Peter, but his eyes glinted with amusement.

"I, for one, am proud," said Dean.

"Peralta," repeated Faith.

Peter grinned. "Totally worth it."

* * *

**August 19th, 2017, Missoula, Montana, 4:53 p.m.**

"Hey."

Faith glanced up from the half-sharpened stake in her hands and the German Shepherd lying at her feet to find Dean Winchester standing in the doorway of the library. "Hey." She scraped her third-favorite knife down along the stake handle. Splinters in one's staking hand definitely fell into the category of 'To Be Avoided At All Costs.' "Where's Stark?"

Using his foot to close the door behind him, Dean walked over to the bookcase and leaned against it so that he was facing her. "Headed to California. He said if he takes the Iron Man suit up above the clouds and stays off of commercial and military flight paths, it's a straight shot to his old pad in Malibu."

"Didn't that fall into the ocean a few years ago?"

"Maybe. Probably? I didn't ask for details. You talk to Spike?"

"And Angel." The next stroke of her blade was excessively forceful, and Faith accidentally took a chunk out of the stake's tempered edge. Neither of them remarked on it.

Dean pulled a basic grimoire of South American creatures off the shelf and leafed through it without taking in a word. "How'd they take it?"

"Bad." The Slayer raked her bottom lip with her top teeth and swept her knife along the stake from base to tip in one swift movement. The pile of wood shavings next to Reggie's tail grew a little larger. "But Fred's there with them, so I'm a little less worried about murder-suicides."

"You okay?"

"Not really used to feeling guilty about killing a psychopath – but I'll get over it. Besides, it's not like there was an option, was there?"

"Not unless you wanted to stake her _and_ me," Dean pointed out.

"Yeah. Which is what I told them. Ugh." Faith dropped the finished stake into a bucket already teeming with them. "Where's Peter?"

The hunter nodded up towards the ceiling. "Taking a Spider-nap upstairs. He's a little pooped, and he remembered that he's got to start studying for finals soon." He smiled fondly. "That kid is _such_ a nerd."

"Worse than Sam?"

"Pff. I dunno. I used to think that was impossible, but this kid's making me reconsider a lot of things. Speaking of Sam, you hear from him? I left him a voicemail, but he hasn't called me back. Maybe I should be freaking out, but between the clusterf-"

"Language," Faith reminded him. "You don't know that the kid's asleep yet."

Dean exhaled. Returning the grimoire to its shelf, he said, "Right. Well, between the mess that was waiting for me at the garage and my brain being sixty percent mold, I didn't freak out about Sam."

"He's fine," the Slayer replied in a reassuring voice. "I talked to Caroline after I finished at their house and again about half an hour ago. Sam's been sleeping in the hospital recliner next to Livvy. She's okay, and they're gonna send her home tonight."

"Good." His brow wrinkled as Dean took a closer look at the Slayer. "How's _your_ hangover?"

"Better than yours, apparently." Faith rolled her shoulders and her neck, stretching them out. "I did the thing for Sam, went on a run, took a twenty-minute nap in the backyard with Reggie - the nausea and migraine have faded some."

"You appreciating your fence?"

"Oh, Reggie loves _his_ fence," she replied innocently.

"Fair enough." There was a pause, and then Dean suggested, "Nap-time?"

Faith raised her eyebrows at him. "It's five in the afternoon."

"The kid's sleeping. So, nap time?" He extended a hand out to pull her off of her stool and up to her feet.

Shrugging, the woman closed her fingers around his and allowed him to help her up. "Fine." She set her knife down onto the work table and left the shavings; they could become tomorrow's problem. "I guess I could use some shut-eye."

They made it all the way to the base of the stairs before Dean said slyly, "And if sleep wasn't exactly what I had in mind?"

Faith shrugged a second time. "We-ell," she pretended to weigh her options, then replied, "I could probably use a little bit of that, too."

The smallest bedroom door opened and closed, and a headful of tousled brown hair poked out into the hallway and onto the landing. "Hey, uh, guys?"

Dean's shoulders visibly slumped. "Let me guess - you're awake, and you can hear us."

"Yeah, sorry," apologized Peter, his expression rueful, his ears turning scarlet.

"And even if you do fall asleep, you're probably going to wake up in five minutes, aren't you?" said the hunter flatly.

"Yeah." Peter shifted his weight from foot to foot and scratched a spot behind his left ear awkwardly. "Probably."

Dean turned to exchange looks with Faith. _The car?_ he mouthed, his lips barely moving.

The Slayer patted his hand and shook her head. "Not a chance in hell, handsome," she said aloud.

Shoulders slumping even further, Dean looked up the stairs to Peter and gritted his teeth. "Okie dokie, then. Actual napping it is."

"I'm, uh, I'm not really that tired, actually," admitted Peter.

"Movie time?" suggested Faith, her eyes twinkling.

"Sure," said Dean, the very picture of dejection. "That's fine. Let's watch a movie."


	14. Homeward Bound

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Final chapter here! Thanks to everyone who's read, followed, or left kudos or comments on this fic. I hope you all enjoyed it! Faith, Dean, and Sam will be back in about a week - I'll be posting the first chapter of a Sync/Criminal Minds crossover set during/immediately after SPN 7x06, Slash Fiction.

 

* * *

**August 30th, 2017, Missoula, Montana, 7:30 p.m.**

Peter was shocked by how quickly the next week and a half flew past. Besides sending half-cryptic photos and videos to Ned, he was far too busy finishing history papers and memorizing the order of the Tudor kings and basic patterns for solving integrals to worry too much about what had happened back in the basement with Drusilla. Two units of blood and a little R&R were more than enough to get him feeling back to normal - well, as normal as he ever felt, that was. Getting bitten by a radioactive spider had pretty much sucked all of the normal out of him. He knew that Faith and Dean had mentioned something to Tony about therapy (the enhanced hearing definitely came in handy at times), and Mister Stark must have said something about being concerned to Aunt May, because she starting calling him every evening when she got off work instead of every other one, and she kept wanting to talk about his feelings.

This was . . . rarely trodden ground for either of them, and Peter had managed to brush things off as best as he could. Besides, as he kept insisting to Dean and to Faith, he was absolutely fine. Yes, perhaps, he had been the second one to win a round of Bad Dreams Bingo, and yes, maybe he'd taken Faith up on her offer of an Ambient one night when things were really bad and he couldn't sleep without nightmares of vampire dust clogging his throat, slowly choking him until there was nothing of him left, and he, too, faded into dust . . . But apart from that, Peter was completely, totally, and adamantly fine.

He toiled away on final papers and final exams, sprawled out across his bed with a softly snoring Reggie next to him. Dean allowed him his last drive in the Impala with the hunter cat-napping in the backseat, and then, when they returned home, handed him the keys and told him to drive back out to the diner and pick up burgers from Faith who was working the late shift.

"Just don't get pulled over," said the older man with an easy grin, and he clapped a heavy hand onto Peter's shoulder. "You've done a great job, here, kid,"

"I know," said the teenager. "I think I passed history."

Dean snorted. "Yeah, that too."

Driving solo was terrifying and exciting all at once. At first, he griped the wheel so tightly that his hands ached, but then he relaxed, turned up the radio, and enjoyed the moment.

And then, all too soon, it was his last night in Montana. Peter stood on the front lawn with the others as the sun slowly sank beneath the horizon, and a stealth-moded Iron Man dropped gently out of the sky, his reflectors and propulsory all dimmed to their lowest levels.

"Here we are, back where it all started," said Tony Stark cheerfully, stepping out of the hot-rod red and gold suit. Beside him, a slightly shorter and smaller Iron Legionnaire touched down onto the grass. Tony removed his helmet and donned a pair of trademark dark sunglasses from the back pocket of his jeans.

"Drama queen," accused Faith, but her tone was friendly.

"Maybe," the billionaire admitted. He pressed his thumbs against a spot on the Iron Legionnaire's chest, and the metal plates covering the chest cavity retracted sideways to reveal a small cooler. Tony lifted the lid on the cooler to reveal several very bloody cuts of meat in vacuum-sealed packaging.

"Not quite the same as last time," observed Dean. "This time, we have steaks." He smiled as his stomach grumbled loudly. "I'll go throw these on the grill. You wanna join me, Stark?"

Tony shrugged. "Sure, sounds like fun." He pressed a fancy combination of buttons on the two alloyed suits and on his cell phone, and the suits themselves began walking creakily towards the open garage. "You mind if my friends here hang out with your car while we eat?"

"Help yourself."

The men set off for the backyard, Peter bringing up the rear a few steps behind.

"Hang on," Faith interjected before they could reach the gate. "Peter's helping me with the salad."

"He is?" asked Tony at the same time that Peter said, "I am?"

"Yes, Pete, you are."

A little disappointed, the teenager nevertheless turned around and walked back towards her. His shoulders drooped forward. "Right, vegetables," he mumbled. "I got it. We'll eat lots and lots of vegetables."

"If it wasn't for his healing factor and spider metabolism, he'd be heart attack-bound by forty, am I right, guys?" snickered Faith.

"Oh, even earlier than that, to be sure," Tony stopped walking and paused to join in on the teasing. "More like thirty-five?"

Dean pretended to mull it over, then pitched in his two cents. "Mmm, I was thinking thirty.'

"Not fair," sulked Peter.

"Nothing's fair," the hunter reminded him. "Hey, Stark, did you hear the good news? This one got an A-minus in history and an A in calculus."

"Way to go, Pete!" Tony held his hand up for a high five, and the teenager ran back to give him one.

"Good job!" continued the engineer, grinning from ear to ear as if he were the one who had just aced calculus. "That's my . . . boy," he finished a little awkwardly.

"I'm your boy?" asked Peter incredulously, grinning in triumph that at least he got to get a little bit of his own back now after the mortifying 'Mom' incident two weeks ago.

"Does his aunt know that you're planning on adopting him?" snarked Faith.

"Please, please shut up. Anyway, I hear the grill calling me," announced Stark. "This would be my cue to go."

Dean snorted. "And my cue to follow you out pointing and laughing."

"So, Faith, do we really have to eat vegetables?" asked Peter once the gate had swung shut behind the others and he had followed the Slayer almost entirely into the house.

She did not pause to consider her answer. "Yes."

"Why?"

"Because," Faith explained patiently, running a large bunch of celery beneath cold water in the kitchen sink, "heart disease is a real and terrifying possibility for everyone here but you - and if the plaque gets bad enough, I could be at risk for a stroke." She shook the excess water off of the celery and set it on a towel next to an already-rinsed head of lettuce to finish drying. The Slayer opened the fridge and reached inside it for two bright bell peppers, one orange and one red.

She continued, "Trust me, Pete, a stroke is not the way I wanna go out." Faith rinsed the peppers, handed them to Peter, and said, "Slice these."

Curious and with peppers in hand, the teenager asked, "How do you want to go out? And please don't mention that Game of Thrones line again. I'm still traumatized from the last time that Dean used it," he added hurriedly. "My brain can't take any more trauma."

Raising an eyebrow, the Slayer momentarily ceased chopping green onions to note, "Easily scarred, aren't you?"

"Only on the inside," joked Peter.

Faith frowned, partially tempted to laugh, but also a hundred and ten percent sure that laughter would be the incorrect response here. "Sometimes I worry about you, Pete."

"That's okay," said the teenager, patting the lettuce dry with a clean hand-towel. "Sometimes I worry about me, too."

To his relief, Faith did not press him. Peter realized instantly after he made the remark that if she was considering that he needed therapy, this had only made it worse. Still, he thought, the adults around him engaged in gallows' humor almost constantly. They couldn't freak out too much if he did the same every once in a while.

After salad prep, Faith set him to chopping miniature-sized golden and Russet potatoes, which she then doused in olive oil, sprinkled with salt and pepper, and stuck in the oven to roast. While they continued to wait for Tony, Dean, and the steaks, Peter helped Faith to clean the kitchen. They wiped down the table and each of the four chairs and dug three of Reggie's chewed-up tennis balls out from beneath the cabinets. The balls were deformed and damp with doggy saliva. Peter winced as he threw them out in to the back yard.

Around the time that the oven beeped on the roasted potatoes, Dean carried the steaks back in, Tony at his heels. They were forced to spend another ten minutes in folding napkins and laying out silverware because the meat had to rest - and then finally, finally, it was dinner time!

"Where's your brother?" asked Tony, politely working on his salad instead of instantly attacking his steak the way that Peter and Dean had. "I had hoped he might be here - I wanted to thank him for helping Peter with history this summer."

"If by helping you mean holding me hostage after class until I finished my reading assignments, like, every other class period, then sure, he helped me," grumbled the teenager sotto voce.

Flicking him in the ear, Dean swallowed a mouthful of filet, then explained, "I invited Sam and Cass, but Sam's so behind on grading and taking care of stuff for Caroline that Caro threatened to divorce him if he leaves the house, and Cass had angel stuff to take care of."

"I'm sure that was it," said Tony smoothly, a wicked gleam in his brown eyes, before adding, "And not that he's petrified with fear of this breath-taking Amazon here." The engineer made an unnecessary gesture towards Faith with his fork.

"Thank you, Tony," purred the Slayer while Dean grimaced and took another large bit of his steak.

"Any time, Faith. Any time. I speak no more than the truth." The billionaire crunched away on his salad and roast potatoes for another minute, and then he cleared his throat to get everyone's attention. "As this is the last time our little gathering will be meeting for a while, there were a few, er, things that I wanted to bring up"

"Aren't there always?" asked Dean under his breath, still a little irritated by the dig against Castiel.

Faith stabbed the hunter gently in the thigh with her fork. "Dean," she said sweetly, "be nice to the nice man who brought the steaks. Tony, please, continue."

Tony swallowed the last of his potatoes. "Okay," he began. "First off, I realize that technically I can only be speaking for me, but I'd like to think that I'm also speaking for Peter when I tell you both how terribly, awfully, incredibly grateful I am to you for taking care of him this summer."

"He was fine," Faith replied, nonchalant, never one to make a big deal of things when they started taking a turn for the sentimental. "I mean, yeah, sure, he ate more than Dean, Reggie 'n' me combined, but it was worth it."

"Easier than Sam, that's for sure," admitted Dean.

"Ha! I knew it," the woman muttered to herself.

The hunter groaned, "Faith, for the love of G-d, shut up."

"You first, cowboy."

"Anyway . . .," Tony attempted to draw their focus back to him. "Peter had an idea of something that might be a good way to express our gratitude. It - it was an excellent idea, actually. I'm very proud of him for thinking of it."

"You are?" Peter meant to ask the question in a very mature, adult voice, but instead it came out as a squeak.

The billionaire smiled. "Yes. With the aid of FRIDAY, I have removed all mentions of the pair of you from all local, county, state, and federal governmental databases that the internet could reach, as well asl prison records, newspapers, and any other non-Carver Edlund-related websites."

Faith and Dean stared at him, mouths agape, and said nothing.

Taking advantage of the silence, Stark went on, "There may be some podunk police station in some podunk town that has yet to upgrade from paper," he shuddered at the thought, "but apart from that, as far as the world wide web is concerned, you two are nothing more than ghosts."

"But like really cool and attractive and corporeal ghosts," added Peter.

Faith finally rediscovered her voice. "You - what?"

"That's - " Dean shook his head, astounded. "You didn't need to do that, Tony."

"I know. I wanted to. Friends?"

The hunter replied without missing a beat, "You even need to ask?"

"That's good to hear. And, uh, you sure you won't ditch me for some brunet with too much eyeliner, will you, Winchester?" Despite the light tone, there was legitimate concern behind the question.

Chuckling, the Slayer patted him on the arm. "That brunette would be me, Stark. And no, we won't ditch you. We're the non-ditching type. I mean, hell, I dug my way out of a grave to save his dumb ass." She pointed her fork in Dean's direction.

"You like my ass," the hunter grinned.

Faith rolled her eyes but agreed anyway, "It is one of your better qualities."

"No flirting at the dinner table, children," said Tony mildly, his eyes gleaming with amusement.

"But I like them flirting at the dinner table," Peter sounded almost offended.

"Me too, kid." Dean paused, took a breath, and turned back to Stark. "This whole thing is very decent of you."

Tony shrugged. "Hey, you got Peter to get an A-minus in history. As far as I'm concerned, that makes us even."

"Technically - and I _really_ hate to say this - technically that was Sam," the hunter confessed.

"I know. Which is why I scrubbed all three of you out of the internet." The billionaire beamed, very satisfied with himself. "You're welcome."

Dean could follow a cue. "Thank you," he said seriously, going on to add, "You're a good man, Tony Stark,"

"Thank you," Tony echoed back at him. "Coming from the one Righteous Man, that means a lot."

"Oh, G-d," groaned Dean. "Those damn books. Am I never gonna be free of them?"

"Nope." The engineer shook his head. "Never."

"Great." He stared morosely down at the salad on his plate. Even the diced bits of celery were mocking him. "That blows." In a valiant attempt at recovery, the man asked, "More steak anyone?"

"Me."

"Me."

"Me!"

After dinner had been consumed, the leftovers put away, the dishes all either washed or stuffed into the dishwasher, they all stood awkwardly in the kitchen. Dean offered yet another movie marathon, but Tony had to regretfully decline. It had been a wonderful evening, but they had a long flight in the suits back to New York City - and he didn't think that tricking Stephen Strange into opening a portal would work a second time.

"You never want to be the boy who cried apocalypse," he said darkly, a sentiment which everyone could heartily agree with.

At length, Dean broke the uncomfortable silence and long series of awkward looks which followed. "Well, guess this is it."

"Guess so," said Peter glumly.

The hunter went on, "Take care of yourself, Pete. Come back whenever you want. And if you need something - anything - dating advice, how to deal with punk-ass douchebags at school, whatever, you just call us, okay?"

"Okay."

It was Faith's turn next. "Door's always open for you," she told him. "And I'm not sayin' that just because you've been sneaking in and out of your bedroom window all week."

Peter looked properly embarrassed. "Aunt May has super-hearing!" he hurried to explain. "I had to practice somehow."

Stark stuffed his fingers into his ears. "La la la. I'm going to pretend I didn't just hear that."

Rolling her eyes, the Slayer continued, "Stay smart and stay safe, okay? That goes for both of you."

"And you two, too," countered Peter.

Dean raised his eyebrows. "You tutu?"

"No," Tony corrected him. "I think he meant, 'You two, also.' Right, Peter?"

"Right."

"Oh." That made a lot more sense. Dean snickered, "I wondered why you were so into ballet all of a sudden."

Peter defended the art form. "It is a really good form of exercise, actually. I mean, like a really, _really_ good one."

"Sure thing, kid." Dean ruffled his hair. "Sure thing."

Slowly, the four made their way to the front door. Reggie managed to walk between everyone's legs and nearly tripped Tony three times before they reached the door, where reluctant hugs were exchanged.

"Goodbye," said Peter sadly, as the Iron Legionnaire opened wide enough for him to climb inside the suit. "Thank you for a wonderful summer."

"Nah, kid. This ain't goodbye," said Dean.

Faith finished for him, "It's see you soon."

"You guys ever think about moving to New York?" asked Peter, half-hoping, half-dreading what the answer might be.

"No," said the Slayer and hunter in unison, not even bothering to exchange looks with one another. "Now, get off our porch."

Laughing behind his helmet, Tony Stark saluted them, and the Iron Man and the Iron Legionnaire rose from the lawn, the propulsors carrying them up, up, up into the air and out of sight.

No sooner had Faith and Dean finished sliding the bolts on all four locks now securing the front door when Dean's cell phone beeped that a message was coming in. He glanced at the text, and he frowned.

"What is it?" asked Faith wearily. She ran a hand along the German Shepherd, from his ears to his tail, and collapsed onto the couch, limbs spread across each of the three pillows.

The hunter sat on the edge of the La-Z-Boy, still frowning. "It's Sam."

Faith stopped digging in between the sofa cushions for the remote. "What's he want?"

"Gimme a sec - he sent like a whole g-ddamned novel." Dean took a minute to scan his brother's message and then said, "He's got info for us. Someone just called in about a possible haunting out in Western Idaho - not too far from Moscow, closer out to the Flathead Resrvation. Sam's got to stick around for school stuff, was wondering if we wanted to take it . . ."

"Huh." Faith considered that for a moment. "You got work tomorrow?"

The next day was Thursday, but he had already planned to take it off. "No."

"Me, neither." Grinning, the Slayer stood up from the couch. "We got anything better to do?"

"No."

"Okay, then, Kansas. Let's go."

And so they went.

_Fin._

**Author's Note:**

> For my Sync readers, please check out the lovely video Faith/Dean - Bruises published on the Tube of You by brokenshardss - aka SunnydaleRehab2. It's sort of an alternate ending to Ramble On and is really, really, really well done!


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